


A Bottomless Curse, A Bottomless Sea (accepting all that is and can be)

by Meatbike344, MistressAkira



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cathedral Fucking, Dark Fantasy, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Gothic, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Bloodborne, Loose Bloodborne Elements/Lore, M/M, Madness, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mildly Dubious Consent, No prior knowledge of bloodborne required, Non-Linear Narrative, Romance, Temporary Character Death, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 58,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27127574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatbike344/pseuds/Meatbike344, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressAkira/pseuds/MistressAkira
Summary: When the moon rises, madness erupts in a red bloom in the eyes of beast-kin and man alike. The city of Yharnam remains in stasis between the bloodthirsty creatures that prowl its streets and the black-robed hunters tasked with ending the scourge.But when one hunter of the workshop, Felix, wakes up in a daze—without his beloved partner nor any memories of the night before, he’ll have to take up his blade and venture deep into the monstrous darkness that lies in wait. But love is a fragile, often tragic thing to possess.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Lysithea von Ordelia, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 13
Kudos: 38
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	1. Phase I: Lucid

**Author's Note:**

> Before you dive into the story, we would also like to say that you DO NOT have to know anything about Bloodborne to read this fic. It is written to be as newcomer friendly as possible while appealing to the familiar characters of FE3H. 
> 
> If you DO know anything about Bloodborne, just note that this fic is LOOSELY based on Bloodborne’s lore, borrowing different elements and locations along with some familiar plot lines, but they are written loosely and are not a faithful adaptation of the game's plot. Changes were made to suit our story so please suspend all hardcore Bloodborne knowledge and enjoy what we have for you! 
> 
> We also would like to let everyone know that this fic will feature dark and uncomfortable themes, which will be too many to tag. Themes include blood and gore (including consumption), temporary death, graphic imagery, displays of madness, and just about anything one can think of regarding the brutal nature of hunting and killing. 
> 
> Naturally, since this fic is based (loosely) on Bloodborne’s lore and themes, these things are natural to the universe. However, we still want to make it a point to let everyone know ahead of time. 
> 
> HOWEVER, this fic will NOT cross the line to explicit non-con and other darker, triggering themes. Just physical displays of bodily harm, violence, and death.

Felix dreamed of blood.

The blood that stained his face and hands- crimson, filthy, dark- and splattered the luminescent flowers beneath him. But it was not his—it spilled from the lone maiden standing below the moon. It was her blood and he did not know who she was.

Her figure stained white against the night, a worshiper exalting some far-off god sleeping beneath the stars, and she lifted her head to greet the black heaven. The long silver locks of her hair flowed outward over the red fields, and for a moment, Felix heard the whispers of a prayer. But he could not make any sense of the language and his ears bled from her voice.

A lullaby not meant for mankind.

Her head craned over and the lilac of her eyes glowed ominously as the sky fell and bled with the white moon. The flowers shivered and the ground beneath them crumbled away, somber, silent, a soundless death.

A dream of silver, red, and lilac. A maiden, a moon, and flowers.

It went white, then black.

Then it was nothing.

Awareness came in slowly. A trickle, the dull sensations of consciousness reverberating through him like a skipping stone- head, fingers, legs, feet.

Felix opened his eyes to a different dark sky.

He forced himself up upon a cool field of flowers—white flowers, pure of the corruption of nightmares. Beyond him, a familiar black workshop jutted from the horizon, towering and crooked, limned by moonlight and the scattered paths lanterns carved from the hillside.

He rose and peered around the Hunter’s Dream, the realm in which all hunters awake after their deaths in the living world. The silver wind blew and whistled around him, carded through the countless gravestones, disturbing their smoke and ivy. He was alone.

Felix rubbed his eyes.

“Dimitri?”

* * *

**The Hunter’s Dream**

_‘A strange dreamland in which all Hunters of the Workshop return for rest and rejuvenation; time and death are absent here, merely suspended in between the realms of awakening and sleep.’_

Felix’s head was spinning in three degrees of speed and with no sense of control, mind careening off a cliff to somewhere dark and wet.

And then he woke up.

And then he was here.

He was _here_ and he knew where he was— _who_ he was.

He was a hunter of the Workshop, tasked to purge the beasts in Yharnam. Friends and neighbors corrupted and consumed by the old blood, now merely hungry predators seeking liberation at the end of a hunter’s gun. And then the poor souls who drift so easily between the blurred line of man and beast. They, too, seek death.

And… there were others. Other hunters.

Sylvain and Ingrid were there. Leonie was- was somewhere far off in the old parts of the city. Dimitri was with him. Dimitri, his partner in arms. The one whose presence was never so far away from Felix’s side.

Only, now he was gone. An unaccountable vacancy with few clues to his whereabouts.

Felix's mind was spinning anew as he lurched forward, staggering about the wet rocks as he fought for the stairs, and nearly tripped over the tangle of tombstones that clustered in his way. There was only night here and it was ever-present, ever-living with a clear, pure moon hovering overhead- but that hardly made it easy to see. Nothing about being a hunter was easy. Least of all, dying.

That was the only thing missing: Felix’s recollection of the last day. He did not remember falling in battle and subsequently ending up in the dream, nor could he possibly remember what had happened with Dimitri at all.

Perhaps Felix did die and Dimitri carried on without him, but that was unlikely—that sentimental fool was not one to abandon someone so quickly.

Felix ascended the steps, his weary eyes straining over the shivering lights of candles that littered the path upward to the Workshop.

In a dream without sunlight, the only life that prospered here were the white flowers in immortal bloom, glowing softly in wreathes that wound the entire hill. The Workshop was that decrepit old ramshackle at the top of the incline, wet with rain that never came, overgrown in rocky moss and vicious clinging ivy. Sometimes when a rare wind blew in from parts unknown, the door swung open and the rafters peeled off from the exposed parts of the roof. Other times, a doll wandered the tombstones, expression morose. And still yet others, a song would wrap around the dream, drowning out every other thing.

It was a strange realm, the Hunter’s Dream; all hunters of the Workshop were revived in this place once they had fallen in the mortal plane. And every single one had to pass through here before they could return to their duties. An aching dreamscape, this realm of unmoving sanctuary, easy to crawl into like the wistfulness of childhood. Shelter from oblivion’s ravening, gnashing jaws.

The first time Felix had died, he died defending Dimitri.

It was right after he joined the Workshop. The scourge of beasts had just begun its creeping rot in small parts of Yharnam, though at the time, they did not call it the ‘scourge’. Merely some ‘unfortunate reactions’ from the administrations of the old blood used to cure the sick.

That’s what they told all the hunters back then.

To this day, Felix knew not how he died. To beast or circumstance, either way, as a freshly recruited junior hunter, he had come across a blonde boy in white robes cornered by a pack of beasts near the Cathedral Ward. The next thing Felix remembered was waking up in the Hunter’s Dream. His first death, one of many, and it was for a blue-eyed Executioner.

But all hunters chained to the dream awoke back to this realm with renewed life. Some were freed from the dream but at the price of losing their twisted immortality. These hunters dreamed no more, their names scored to stone, to decorate this hill.

But Dimitri was not here- in grave nor flesh- and Felix greeted the inside of the workshop with a dull gaze. Alight by the whippish flickering of candle wicks, a wooden work table stood lone in the center of the room, bits of silver scattered about its scarred surface, old books splayed and left wide open on the floor. An uncanny warmth pressed in as if to greet him, and yet he still shuddered when he stepped inside.

He stood alone in the middle of the workshop and listened to the soft whistling of the wind. Dimitri was not here. No one was; he died alone.

But what scared him the most was that he did not know how he got here. Attempting to remember stung like a hot stone pressed against his skin and he felt like vomiting.

Where was Dimitri? Why was Felix here, alone?

The gaps in his memory were more fearsome than any beast or man he ever faced. Felix prided himself in remembering. Remembering everything. It made it even worse when he understood then, quite clearly, that something was wrong.

A terrible fate had somehow befallen them, and now Felix could not even remember it.

It didn’t seem his answers were here in this place of dreams and childhood.

The lone hunter picked up his weapon from the table, sheathing the blade carefully before slowly trudging back down the effervescent hill in preparation for his reluctant return to the gruesome churn of Yharnam. Unlike this stalwart Hunter’s Dream, it was a metropolis changing ever so monstrously.

A flourishing, bloody metamorphosis right before his eyes.

* * *

**Central Yharnam**

_"The heart of a twisted city, left in ruin from both the hunger of beasts and the madness of man—what is the line between the two now?”_

Ash and rust awaited him on the other side of waking. The dream smelled of nothing; it was statis. The city smelled of offal and burnt flesh; it was ravenous.

In Yharnam, Felix had not any worry of strange, pained dreams of silver maidens and blood. It was all about the hunt, the cleansing of the sick and putrid, and the salvation of the healing church. Moreover, there was hardly time for dreams of any kind here. The only sleep that lasted in Yharnam was that of the dead.

And the streets themselves were the contrived makings of a living nightmare.

Ebony, jagged spires and cindering factories, narrow capricious alleys and labyrinthine tunnels, not a single cobble in the hellish vastness of the city was to be underestimated. Cast in the blood dusk light of a smokey afternoon, an ever-present facade choking the air and the inhabitants still in need of it, it wasn’t to say the metropolis was stagnant; it was only that it changed and shifted as the hours grew late into the night. The witching hours made Yharnam _hungrier_ , and far less patient.

Broken barricades laid demolished and splayed down the main avenue, wood and stone bones crushed to dust, and vacant, spent carriages littered the streets. Dancing shadows of fallen torches threatened the revived hunter with exposure as bodies of the fallen lined the allies like discarded rags and charred corpses swung from slapdash gallows in the square, the smell of dead flesh raw like salt against bleeding skin.

A paradise of decaying flesh and malevolent shadows. But it was empty; all things breathing had moved on.

That only made sense though, the creatures had all but been driven back in the deeper hollows of the city last Felix was fighting.

Smoke was visible from where Felix stood and he listened to the familiar lullaby of gunfire booming from the deeper bowels of Yharnam—the other hunters were still here, doing the harsh, bloody work expected of them each day.

Sylvain’s musket had a familiar sound—a crank before the fire, and it rang out somewhere near the Cathedral Ward. He and Ingrid were still hunting as it seemed.

But Dimitri’s gun couldn’t be heard amidst the cacophonous mire. Felix would know it anywhere, a roar like a lion’s call, heralding the hunt—it was absent from the crimson sky, and Felix felt the thick bile of fear creeping into his lungs, sick as pneumonia.

Perhaps Dimitri did fall in battle and was at the Hunter’s Dream now, ready to return.

Somehow, that answer hissed ruefully of a false truth.

Chasing the melodious call of the slaughter, Felix stalked slowly down the thin alleyways of Yharnam, measuring his silence, watching his step; wounded dogs and blinded men hissed at him from their corners, but the lone hunter had no mercy to spare for them with steel and bullets of silver better spent elsewhere. The tattered edges of his black coat tails drug through mud and were stained wet with tainted blood as they were every night, but he never minded the filth so much when Dimitri was nearby- another black-robed hunter, his companion in this arduous duty.

A boy in white. A man in black. Now he was gone, and Felix thought about how grueling the act of killing was. To wear it, day in and day out, filthy to the point when nothing but a new set of bones and skin felt any measure of clean. But it was easier to bear and easier to cleave a beast in two with a partner; only half the blood stained you that way.

The lone hunter wiped the red from his cheeks and slowly descended a set of cracked stairs, deeper to the streets where the sewers slugged slowly with the runoff concoction of death.

He followed the flint of Sylvain’s gunshots until he found the blood-haired hunter and his icy partner, Ingrid, striking down beasts near the Tomb of Oedon.

A werewolf howled its fury beneath Ingrid’s foot, and she pieced the creature through its wretched eye with the end of her swan-headed cane.

She and Sylvain had been working together since the earliest days post-recruitment to the Workshop, her high-strung studiousness a compliment to his lackadaisical genius, the two forming an uncannily proficient pair despite their frequent bickering. It was not so uncommon for the duo to stumble upon Felix and Dimitri while they went about their gruesome work in the city. Cleansing was a group activity after all.

It was Sylvain who looked up first, handsome face weary and covered in a thin mask of grime and sweat. His long ink-spattered hunting coat was tied rather casually around his waist as though he were preparing to write some academic papers—not to kill mad dogs.

The hunter smirked knowingly as Felix approached and silently greeted the pair with a nod.

“Felix, a lovely afternoon in our great city of Yharnam, isn’t it?” Sylvain slurred with a cheeky wink, thick black blood caked into the crimson of his hair and running bright down the sharp planes of his jaw. One hand pressed to the side of his face and the other bore a long, darkly wrapped scythe, crescent blade curled up against the sky and dripping red like a bleeding moon.

He'd busted a lip, it would seem; it explained his ridiculous slur, but the headwound must’ve looked worse than it actually was. Sylvain always spoke so blythe; the Laughing Fox was a fitting title for the bastard.

Felix frowned deeply. “Every day in this wretch of a city is the same. To find any loveliness in it is simply delusion.”

Sylvain offered him the upturned stained leather of his glove. “Come now, my friend, our world could always use a spot of love even where none can be found.”

“What of this one?” Ingrid said and poked the head of the dead werewolf. The sharp end of her threaded cane pierced into the skin and made a wet sound. Her partner’s face contorted slightly and she laughed lowly. “Felix, where is your better half?”

“Your _bigger_ half?” Sylvain amended wickedly.

Felix glanced down at the crumbled monster, its black-rimmed teeth and speared and oozing eye socket.

“Gone,” He said bluntly.

“Gone?” Ingrid echoed.

“Gone.”

Sylvain scoffed. “How do you lose a six-foot, two hunter? You'd think him for a werewolf was it not for the nine feet of killing silver on his back." He rested the shaft of the scythe on his shoulder and sighed. "Did you check the Hunter’s Dream?”

“I was just at the Hunter’s Dream, you oaf,” Felix snapped and rubbed his hands together as he looked away. “I died. Obviously.” The streets behind them were littered in bodies and fur, the distant sound of dying howls shriveling beneath their boots. All as it normally was- except for Felix. And Dimitri.

Ingrid’s cane struck the cobblestone sharply and she frowned. “You don’t know where he is? At all? It’s not like Dimitri to go missing.”

“Worry not, Ingrid. I’m sure the captain is somewhere off in the city. Probably clearing out the rest of the bestial population.” Sylvain shrugged, and drummed his bleeding fingers on his weapon. “Why don’t you go help with the cleaning efforts, Felix? I’m sure you will run into him—god knows, it’s hard to avoid him.”

Ingrid snorted, straightening the ties of the bow binding back her hair. “You’re just saying that because he keeps catching you with women when you should be clearing the streets.”

“The nuns and I only exchange blessings in a god-honoring way, Ingrid.”

“So, the dear sisters of the cathedral get down on their knees to bless your briefs?”

Sylvain smirked. “Exactly. God honoring.”

“Enough!” Felix suddenly hissed, clenching the hilt of his beloved blade at his side.

While he was usually so tolerant of Sylvain and Ingrid’s banter, he had quickly grown irritable in lethal capacity; he was noticing everything now—how the blood that stained his clothes had the same consistency of thick bile, or how his sword suddenly felt heavy and unwieldy at his side, or even how—despite the brandy heat of the smoky Yharnam air, he felt so achingingly, incandescently, cold, lonely and so very cold.

Felix breathed through his teeth and shook his head. “Dimitri...he wasn’t with me—at the Hunter’s Dream. He’s never far behind. But now I don’t know where he is...”

“Do you remember what happened?” Ingrid asked.

When Felix shook his head frantically, all humor drained from their faces, like blood from a strung up pig.

Ingrid gripped her cane tightly. “What happened, Felix?”

“Not sure. I don’t even remember what I was doing with Dimitri beforehand. I woke up without any recollection of the last day.”

“And...you do not know where Dimitri is?”

“No, I...no.”

“You probably got ambushed and Dimitri kept fighting in your stead. Go on and clean up Yharnam. I promise you will run into him eventually,” Sylvain said with a careful voice and a cautious smile. “You know Dimitri—it is impossible to kill him. And every time _you_ die, he returns to the Hunter’s Dream like a lost puppy to find you." He patted Felix on the shoulder guard. "He's probably just busy. He’ll be fine.”

Felix blinked back into reality and nodded. “Yes...yes, you’re right. Dimitri is somewhere—he’ll be here soon. I’ll go take care of the rest of the beasts in the meantime.”

He steadied himself on the pommel of his sword, and made to leave.

“Felix.”

The hunter looked up and greeted Sylvain’s suddenly piercing stare. Dark and earthen, like the soil of a freshly dug grave.

“Remember your duty.”

The hunter gestured to the rune attached to Felix’s breast and nodded solemnly.

The rune, an upside-down cross where the wing curved inward to a single dot, tipped like a spear; its symbol signifying a hunter whose duties went beyond the Workshop’s philosophy of executing common beasts and madmen- a hunter of hunters. The one to put down fellow hunters lost to the madness of the blood.

Felix only nodded back without a word, and stalked away in the direction of Central Yharnam, Sylvain and Ingrid watching the tattered, forlorn shape of him weave between the gravestones, feathered cloak fluttering behind him in the scorched wind like a broken wing.

Once the dark hunter had disappeared away into the low misty streets, the huntress sighed deeply.

“You’re not suggesting that Dimitri…”

“He hasn’t been well in a long time, Ingrid- not since he left the Executioners. And now he’s gone, and not even Felix knows where he is.”

“Perhaps...he’s only off somewhere, and Felix was just feeling disorientated.”

Sylvain closed his eyes. “One can only hope.”

* * *

The end of the world did not begin with a bang. Nor a clatter, or a shout.

It began with but a whimper.

It began with blood.

What was once the scourge of beasts preying upon the helplessness of man was turned and twisted in of itself when the hunters appeared. They were fear- a pure, primordial, immortal thing that the Healing Church or the Choir or even the Executioners couldn’t provoke in the monstrous, ravening beings that brought calamity upon the land. They were salvation too, not a single sweeter, safer lullaby than the sight of black robes stalking down wet streets.

Hunters of the Workshop came from all walks of life representing neither nobility nor poverty, merely the long trench of death for those unfortunate enough to be corrupted by the blood. For those who turn, there was no end for them to meet but at the muzzle of a black-robed hunter’s gun.

And then there was Felix. The Vileblood Wolf.

That’s what they called him.

The rune that glowed at his breast, an ominous, glinting totem against the ink-black feathers of his uniform. Only one per generation, to be the executioner for hunters gone mad with the slaughter. It was pure trickery—this hunter who donned the robes of the Workshop and did the same work as the others, yet had this foul and sinister role among his brothers and sisters. A wolf in hunter’s clothing.

His nature was a double-edged sword; to slay and cleanse the city of beasts, but to also show eternal mercy to his fellow hunters who fell to the bloodlust—for what is the line between man and predator than the illusion of stability?

Felix stared at his blood-soaked gloves as the ground around him soured with the mixed bodies of mad townsfolk and werewolves. Crows flitted about, ebony wings and beaks busy as they picked apart the remains in search of the warm bits, heedless, careless, or perhaps just thankful to the lone hunter standing amongst the decimation- for no one ate better in the wicked world than the carrion did this long night.

But he was not staring at them—his gaze was on the mangled corpse of another hunter, slumped a few feet away against the rocks. Felix had witnessed the mania in his eyes, clouding all vision before the shriek of death. This hunter’s end was quick and merciful—as quick as he deserved. As quick as any. Felix never liked to prolong a fight. But for this moment, everything moved in a tangent of hours.

Lying near the hunter’s limp hand was his badge—from the Workshop, Felix’s very own kin. Of course, he did not recognize him. Once they went mad, he never recognized them.

The bells above Yharnam tolled, long and clear, the blood moon settled lowly on the horizon and nestled within the clouds, the nearest facsimile to a sunrise they’d had for years now.

The night was long. Felix’s nights were longer.

 _‘It hurts, doesn’t it? To put them down,’_ A warm voice crooned somewhere, far off, as if from a dream. _‘I wish there was more we could do for them. I worry for you, Felix. This is far different than slaying dogs. But fear not: you will never be alone. I will always be with you.’_

Another mad hunter, dead.

Where was Dimitri?

* * *

🌑 _**New Moon**_ 🌑

_The first time Felix died, it was for the blue-eyed Executioner._

_But then Felix woke up._

_And now he could not be moved from the sight: that very same boy, robed in white with eyes bright and blue as the first stars of winter and hair as soft and gold as threads of silk- he was before him again, he was before Felix_ now _\- days after their fateful first encounter- and when he had approached him he had smiled— but not a smile like any Felix had ever witnessed before. Not back in Cainhurst. Not here in Yharnam._

_This smile was one of a fictional land, far away from this accursed place. Meant for a different world entirely._

_It belonged to a storybook prince riding atop with a mighty stallion of silver, not a gangly young man with long limbs and shoulders he’d yet to grow into, a chin too strong for his boyish face. He smiled like they belonged in a kingdom of white and gold, and not this black reality, thick with the smell of burnt flesh, blood-drenched cobblestone and the heads of poor farmers rolled in the streets like an overturned basket of apples._

_And he was smiling at_ Felix _like that- two delicate little fangs probing out from his thin lips like a lion cub draped in white._

_The hunter could only stand there in awe, staring wide-eyed at the prince among piles of dead and ash behind him._

_“What...What did you say?” He asked with a stutter, as though he had been cursed viciously._

_The boy smiled. “I wanted to personally thank you for saving me last time. I came here to show you my appreciation,” He repeated patiently._

_And Felix almost laughed, hearing it again, but the painfully sincere expression on his companion’s face had him choked on his tongue._

_“Do you even realize where we are?”_

_“The chapel? It’s quite beautiful here, isn’t it?”_

_“No that’s not—you can’t be following me around when beasts are lurking in the streets. Yharnam is a mess, the people are all scared of each other. Hunters must hunt...and you came all the way here to thank me!” He chided him harshly, ignoring the curious stare of the Chapel Keeper—Mercedes, tending to the wall of incense a few paces away._

_“Oh, I’m sorry,” The prince apologized and stepped back sheepishly, fumbling with his gloved hands.“I simply felt bad... because you sacrificed yourself for me. I wanted to see you again.”_

_Felix scoffed, and waved an angry hand at the boy. “By the Old Blood, you cannot be making social calls at a time like this. What kind of hunter are you? Wearing white when blood stains anything that isn’t black. Where is even your badge? How did the Workshop let you in?” He sneered, a strangely erratic throbbing in his chest._

_He was not usually so cruel, but Yharnamites knew quite well that Felix was an outsider, and had long dispensed with any hospitality he might have hoped for. Even his fellow hunters of the Workshop stayed away from the strange boy from Cainhurst Castle, whispering among themselves of tainted blood._

_But instead, the prince only chuckled lightly and untucked from his robes a small rune bound to a chain around his neck. The symbol was too small for Felix to see but it glowed in the dim candle half-light of the chapel. “Oh, but I’m not a part of the Workshop, my friend. I’m with the Executioners.”_

_Felix’s heart seized._

_The Executioners. Murderous zealots and sworn enemies of Cainhurst. Renowned for their white robes and deep, devout fanaticism. Back at the castle, his father always warned him about the unholy soldiers of the Healing Church. Of course, Felix had then ran away and ended up in the land sworn to his death._

_Now his enemy was standing right in front of him, as if the fates intended to hound Felix for his accursed bloodline across even the sea- found this beautiful Executioner to put him down on the spot._

_Was it because he abandoned his people and the court to kill in a rival country? Because he yearned to be a part of the hunt, to fight for something meaningful rather than hole up in a castle and watch the world decay into madness?_

_“I have something for you,” The Executioner continued, turning a gloved hand to search through his robes meticulously. Felix did not move or speak, even as he was presented with a large vial of blue liquid. He stared at it as though the executioner was offering him a human head to devour._

_“What is this?” He asked brusquely._

_“Blue elixir! It’s a rarity here in Yharnam, but should be useful in combat. I think it turns you invisible or something…” The Executioner looked up and tilted his head, his blue eyes glowing like agate stones in a river. “What’s wrong? Do you not like it? I promise it won’t hurt.”_

_Felix kept his expression even as he forced down the violently conflictory emotions within him; he closed his eyes and nodded reluctantly, reaching out and accepting the gift. The liquid pooled around the glass and glowed ominously._

_“Thanks…well, if that’s it, you better go back to the cathedral. I have work to do, you know.”_

_Felix made to step around him, but the Executioner surged forth, cutting off his path of escape, and all but shoved his face into Felix’s. “What is your name?” He asked excitedly._

_Here, the hunter was able to see the bright, enamoring youthfulness that blessed the Executioner’s boyish handsomeness and brilliant eyes. In a place like Yharnam, the only true beauty was the short darkness before the painful awakening, At least, after tasting it, that was what Felix had thought._

_The hunter choked dryly and nearly tripped in his haste back._

_“Why? Why do you need to know?”_

_The prince offered him a sheepish upturn of lips. “Because I want to be friends?”_

_“Friends? There are no friends here—you’re either human or you’re not. Remember that, fool,” Felix rebuked harshly, ducking his head to hide the sudden red swell on his cheeks._

_The Executioner’s expression did something odd then. It flickered- a wince, a frown, something darker. Then it evened out, edges smoothed down to perfection._

_“... This is a twisted, ugly world we live in.” He eventually said with a sad smile. “Don’t you think we should have companions to help us alongside in it?”_

_Felix gritted his teeth. “This isn’t a fairy tale.”_

_“I know—but I would still like to know you.”_

_The hunter frowned. He had long since steeled himself to the miseries of this land, the miseries brought upon him by his past- but those walls he had raised and barricaded himself within were crumbling under the brunt of this blue-eyed weakness._

_He sighed deeply and turned away, the blue elixir firm within his grip._

_“Felix.”_

_The Executioner smiled brightly as though he had been given a great gift, and pressed a hand to his chest. “It is an absolute pleasure to meet you, Felix. My name is Dimitri.”_

_“A pleasure,” Felix mocked and rolled his eyes. “Sure.”_

_He turned and trudged back out towards the courtyard, ignoring the heat of the Executioner’s gaze boring straight into his back, when a friendly voice called out._

_“I’ll see you around!”_

_He waved him off. “Sure.”_

_The blue elixir glowed faintly in his hands; a strange tingling warmth rising from his neck and beyond._

* * *

A dream of blood once more.

The silver-haired maiden was there again. She was sleeping somewhere far above and detached- like a cloud.

The moon was sleeping; she was sleeping.

But the flowers bloomed red.

...

“Who are you?”

* * *

**The Hunter’s Dream**

The messengers were strange little creatures. Tiny skeletal servants, limbs thin and faces warped in ghastly shrieking sorrow, they performed their duties through the unseen aether, sprouting from the ground, stumps, and the occasional bath to present gifts and pass special notes between the hunters of the Workshop. Their assistance was of vital necessity to the hunters’ work, and it was not so unusual for Felix and Dimitri to come across the blooms of them in their travels.

They erupted upward so suddenly at their feet, tiny hands outstretched with messages from other hunters who passed through areas before. These messages were often useful, mostly written by diligent hunters such as Ingrid or Leonie with notes of caution or different tips for those proceeding forward.

And then there were the ones from Sylvain.

‘ _Take a step forward,’_ One message had spouted, penned in his perfect cursive handwriting on the edge of a cliff.

Felix still remembered the first time he and Dimitri read it while they were hunting in the black woods outside Yharnam. The former Executioner had just joined the Workshop and was still getting used to the different laws of the hunt- lethal with his skills, but still practically a newborn fawn trying to stand on its fragile legs when it came to the order of things.

When Dimitri’s eyes had landed on the note, he’d smiled softly, gave a short nod, and jumped down without another thought.

By the time Felix returned to the Hunter’s Dream, his new partner had invoked a vow of silence against the other hunter and did not talk to him for an entire week; Sylvain, on the other hand, had not shut up about the incident since then.

Felix stumbled back into the moonlit grotto and clutched his cold head. The damp soil beneath his feet smelled oddly of decay, like a long-wasted corpse heaved from a river. It was not uncommon for the hunter to experience terrible migraines and bouts of twisted senses momentarily every time he returned to this realm.

Initially, Felix blamed it on his foreign blood, for the Hunter’s Dream was in service of those from the Workshop. But this was a dream like any other and dreams did not have loyalties to any country or people. Only those who _could_ dream were permitted within the sacred garden; and vileblood or no, this was one privilege Felix was afforded in this distant, loathsome land.

Near his feet, a tiny crowd of messengers suddenly popped up in a burst of mist, hands outstretched in greeting. This particular cluster in the grotto often welcomed Felix when he returned, like a strange, multi-limbed pet running to its master when they came home for the day.

The hunter stared down at the small creatures, smirking a bit at the fancy top hats they wore. The year Dimitri joined the Workshop, he and Sylvain chipped in and bought the messengers several tiny hats to wear, deeming the monstrous little things as _cute_.

Perhaps at the time, Felix did not see it as such. In fact, he found it troubling that both the former Executioner and the strange boy from the League thought of the creepy skeleton children so affectionately. But even Ingrid cooed once they donned their fancy hats, and now the hunter had grown soft at the sight of his greeters; the last five years had loosened him up quite a bit.

The messengers reached and roiled, two of them supporting a wrapped scroll, and another held up a vial of blood. Felix bent down and accepted the gifts with a small nod, reluctantly unfurling the message and-

_A hunter is never alone. – Dimitri_

Felix remembered, of course; Dimitri had instructed the messengers many years ago when he first started to gift any hunter passing through the Hunter’s Dream with a blood vial for healing. Of course, this was also back when most of the senior hunters were still around, sane and tethered to the dream- even then, Dimitri had been very insistent on playing mother hen.

Felix then shifted his gaze to the blood vial, and startled. It was not the standard glass bottle with the short cork, which the Workshop offered in their main supply line to all hunters. It was a hand-poured bottle of blood, a blue-white handkerchief tied elegantly around the top with a piece of silk twine.

Dimitri’s own blood straight from his body. The messengers always saved it for Felix, especially after long and grueling hunts. While the usual vials helped stabilize and restore health after a tough battle, Dimitri’s had a pleasant aftereffect that gave Felix more energy. The hunter understood how blood ministration directly from the body was extremely strenuous, but Dimitri was always so insistent on Felix accepting _his_ blood vial.

Felix took the vial and felt the blood’s gravity, warm through the glass. After a moment of contemplation, he brought Dimitri’s vial against his chest and cradled it like a newborn child, staying very still even as the cool wind blew around him; the messengers watched him with their pathetic yearning expressions, and Felix bent down to pet their hatted heads rather affectionately before handing the glass back.

He wondered where in the world his partner might be.

* * *

**Cathedral Ward – Grand Cathedral**

_"Just beyond Yharnam lies a nearby town of the Healing Church, or the Cathedral Ward—the last pockets of sanctuary.”_

“Leonie needs your help clearing out Old Yharnam.”

Felix reached up to wipe some of the vicerea off his face, but only succeeded in spreading it further. “I thought the beasts there were forbidden to touch.”

“Not anymore. Better kill them now before they spill into Central Yharnam.”

The blood-haired hunter stretched his back out, cracks resounding in the deathly quiet cathedral, and he slumped down against the body of the cleric beast they had slain. Cleric beasts were rictus, mutilated creatures transformed from infected humans, and twice as dangerous as the common mongrel prowling the streets.

Felix had traveled back to Cathedral Ward with Sylvain after one had been spotted around the Grand Cathedral. For such creatures, it was necessary to travel and fight in pairs, especially considering the raw speed and strength of one; and they only got bigger, the more humans it consumed. The first time Felix fought one was with Dimitri the year he joined the workshop—they died together.

Luckily this time around, he and Sylvain had the experience necessary to tackle the enormous beast- so big Felix shivered to think of all the souls it must have devoured- especially with the latter’s knowledge from his time with The League. Perhaps out of the two, Sylvain was the most capable of handling himself with monsters before he joined the Workshop; he’d done most of his work hunting down vermin, after all.

“I gotta ask you,” Sylvain said, breaking the dead silence with a chuckle and wiping his own nose, achieving about as much as Felix had in terms of the blood. “Why do you carry that blade around? Not once in the past five years have you switched it out.”

He was referring to Felix’s Chikage blade, a famed weapon from Cainhurst—he took it with him when he fled the castle and made his way to Yharnam. But it was a weapon of foreign imagery, strange especially to the other hunters who first stared at it as though it were a werewolf Felix had brought in on a leash.

Back then, there was still such contention between Yharnam and Cainhurst, especially with the Executioners’ oppressive influence, sponsored as they were by Yharnam’s backbone, the Healing Church. They were all gone now—Yharnam, Cainhurst, The Executioners. Felix’s blade was but a remnant of a dead kingdom and a dead grudge.

The hunter gripped the hilt and turned away, staring off into the small puddles of black blood pooling out from the cleric beast’s body. He wiped his hot, wet forehead with the back of his gloved hand again and squinted up at the Grand Cathedral ceiling, where the vaults had broken away and allowed stunning moonlight to pour down onto the forsaken altar.

“It was my brother’s sword.” Felix finally said quietly.

“Ah,” Sylvain sniffed. He sunk further down the beast’s side, deeper into the filthy fur. “You’re allowed to be a little sentimental, I suppose. It’s not like we all have things to cling to during these long nights. I just thought it was strange that you never experimented with any other weapons the Workshop offered.”

“No need—I’m good with this.”

“And I have no doubt that you are.” Sylvain’s voice trailed off into a cold silence, and he stared off at the cracked marble floor of the Cathedral. “I’m the same way, of course...”

Beside him, still pierced into the eye of the Cleric Beast, was Sylvain’s scythe—the Burial Blade, he called it. It was a strange weapon that contracted into itself like most metamorphic weapons in Yharnam. Felix remembered their first meeting five years ago, the young man was proudly showing it off to some female hunters with the cheekiness of an upstart brat who’d just purchased his first horse.

Of course, in battle, it was frightening—even more so than Dimitri’s long rifle spear or Ingrid’s quick threaded cane. The difference was that the Burial Blade almost seemed...alive. Felix could not describe it, but it was like the steel was hungry, like it craved- that it sang for its supper, whistling eerily across the battlefield as it took its bloody piece.

Distantly, Felix realized Sylvain had started humming softly, settled contently there against the dead beast, red as a wound. His broad shoulders sagged ever so slightly and he almost seemed to be drifting off; cheery and unaffected as he always played at being, there was a constant weariness that slipped through once in a while. The Laughing Fox, laughing no more.

“You still haven’t found Dimitri, have you?” His soft voice fluttered up from the still body.

Felix stopped and stealthily threw a surprised glance to Sylvain. When Felix did not say anything to rebuke it, his companion gave a low, pained chuckle and drew his head back up. He looked tired— eyes rimmed with gray and shot through with red, dead in every way for it not the piercing sense of reason still present in those eyes.

“I thought so,” He muttered and smiled softly. “You know, he’s not one to stray far from us—not since he left the Executioners. I was just thinking about how cute it was back then, this starry-eyed church cub following us around the Workshop. Hell, I think he still wore that long white cloak back then. Do you remember, Felix?”

“No.” Felix lied.

“It was the four of us—sure, we all came from different parts of the world but the fact that we found each other in the Workshop. I guess, I never forgot about it—the time with my family.”

“What are you getting on about?”

Sylvain stopped smiling; he looked like a stranger. “We’re both sentimental men, aren’t we? The fact that we still carry the weapons of our dead brothers is proof enough. But even the five years of happiness we had had come to an end sometime.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Felix nearly shouted and stalked over with his hand on his blade, gripping it so harshly that he felt the leather of his glove tear. “Delusional bastard, stop talking in riddles and just tell me—”

“I think Dimitri has gone rouge.”

Felix gave a hollow laugh and shook his head. His torn, ragged cloak felt heavy against his shaking shoulders, even as he spun around and stalked off towards the grand stairs leading out of the Cathedral. He ignored the startling screams of the dead wailing outside or even how Sylvain finally lifted himself. His voice called out—a painful, sorrowful sound that echoed from a broken body, resounded in this broken world.

“Felix.”

The hunter stopped but he did not turn around.

“Come back alive—either with Dimitri or with his badge.”

_Remember your duty._

After a minute, Felix finally descended the steps and made his way across the night-stricken streets of the Ward.

* * *

🌒 _**Waxing Crescent**_ 🌒

“ _I did not expect to run into you here,” Felix stated irritably and crossed his arms._

_The Great Bridge was the main connection between Cathedral Ward and Yharnam, previously traveled en masse by carriages going in and out of the two cities. Ever since the surge of the beast scourge, though, which completely decimated Old Yharnam and began to spread like wildfire throughout the main city, the Healing Church blocked off all access to Cathedral Ward._

_Now the grand bridge was guarded and maintained by the hunters of the Workshop, tread only by the boots of the black-robed and the filthy paws of monstrosities. Littered by the dark bodies of disemboweled carriages and the rotting flesh of horses—torn at their sickly skin with the marks of beasts all over their purple, descated forms- it was far from a favorable posting. Hot winds blew in from the valley, carrying with them loose bits of lives long gone, the overwhelming smell of decay oppressive, suffocating._

_And yet the only thing Felix could focus on was the sight of the white prince standing near the edge of the bridge, staring out towards the moon. Dimitri looked over his shoulder and his big blue eyes, sparkling gems set upon a pale, handsome face, widened with joy. It almost took Felix aback by how inexplicably happy the Executioner was, as though he had spotted an old friend._

_They were not friends._

_“Oh Felix, it’s so good to see you again!" Dimitri smiled, his tiny fangs shining faintly, so wide it seemed his cheeks might burst. "But what are you doing here?"_

_“What does it look like?” The hunter gestured all around him and towards the Cathedral Ward. “The night never ends; the hunt never ends. If you should see me, assume that I’m here to seek prey.” He crossed his arms once more, and fixed the Executioner with a properly surly scowl. “And what of you? Sightseeing at a place like this?”_

_“I wish. No, I was simply praying.”_

_Felix frowned at the oddity of such a thing. This boy was a strange creature- even the way Dimitri spoke seemed foreign, alien even. Perhaps he too was an outsider from a land far gone. Or perhaps he was simply a bit strange._

_“Praying? Should you not be at the cathedral then?” Felix glared at him, unwilling to be swayed. “Not that the Healing Church will be by to provide you any relief. I heard your people all left once the beasts came in from Yharnam.” He added cruelly._

_Dimitri did not seem to pick up on this, but frowned nonetheless. “My people are dead; the Executioners are no more.”_

_“I know.” Felix said tightly._

_He had long since heard the news; of the great siege of Castle Cainhurst from the Executioners. They flooded the land and slaughtered all of the vilebloods- but the invaders too were lost in the grisly bloodbath. Felix was not particularly saddened by such news—he always despised the vileblood court. But the blade—Glenn’s blade, bound to his side, felt heavier in his hand than ever before._

_“You were not there at Cainhurst?” He asked Dimitri._

_The last Executioner shook his head solemnly. “No...they told me that I was too young and that I should stay back here with the Church.”_

_“That makes sense—you’re just a boy,” Felix sneered, his eyes wandering all over the prince. Dimitri was much taller than him, broad and staunch and even bigger with that stupid white cloak draped over his regal shoulders. But his face was too soft, too naive. This one still had pleasant dreams and ideas._

_“You’re a boy too—you barely fit into your hunter robes,” Dimitri shot back lightly with a bit of pout. “I’m seventeen, besides.”_

_Ah, the same age as Felix. He was not about to admit to that, however. “A hunter matters not of age or sex—with the scourge of beasts, they would ask anyone to join in the hunt. Anyone. Your situation just sounds like war, and children shouldn’t be fighting in war.”_

_“What does it matter? Everyone is dead anyway,” Dimitri sighed, tinged bitterly of resignation, and looked back out towards the glowing moon. He pressed a hand to his breast. “I was not close with them, the Executioners, I mean. But they gave me cause, some path through this dark world we all live in. Now I have nothing left but the God.”_

_Felix swallowed. “God?”_

_“The one who lives in the moon. She watches over us.”_

_“That sounds idiotic. Absolutely stupid. Who told you this nonsense? The Executioners?”_

_“No,” Dimitri shook his head—he was still dreaming like a child. He hadn’t the slightest how the rest of them were forced to dream. “My friend, Edelgard. She studies at the School of Mensis, you know. She has shown me many things of this world. There are Gods we cannot see—-they’re all around us, clinging to the steeples and trees. They watch over us as a mother does to their child.” He drew in a long, weighted breath. “It feels...calming to be so loved.”_

_Dimitri was looking at something, something that was not there—a ghost drifting through the humid air in gleeful mockery._

_Felix did not know what to think. This beautiful daydream prince had fallen out of his fairytale to ramble and mutter like a madman possessed, glowing eyes so drawn and far out that the hunter wondered what it was he could ever be staring at._

_“Stop talking nonsense,” Felix finally said and shook his head. “You’re a bizarre one, you hear me? An absolute enigma.”_

_Dimitri blinked himself back to reality, consciousness returning with vigor to the brights of his eyes as he chuckled lightly—the sweet sounds of a chime in the wind. “I suppose so—but what are you doing talking to madmen when you could be hunting down beasts?”_

_“Shut it. I was on my way until you distracted me with your stupid white cloak. Such terrible attire to wear in a world that’s always bleeding.”_

_“You think it doesn’t look good on me?”_

_“That’s not the point, you boar,” Felix snapped harshly, backing away to hide the obvious blush burning through his cheeks. “I meant, you should not be wearing anything that could stain. Idiot.”_

_“Ah, you’re right. I suppose that would make a mess of things, huh?” Dimitri laughed and examined his cloak earnestly. Despite how much blood and muck was smeared all over the bridge, none of it touched the boy in white. It was as though he floated down from some place high and clean. Even his glowing face was clear of tarnish—not that Felix was staring._

_“Ah, Felix, I wanted to ask you…”_

_“No, we still cannot be friends,” The hunter quickly grunted out and turned away to stalk off. A strong hand suddenly shot out and grabbed Felix’s own , and the boy completely stopped in shock._

_“No, I wanted…,” Dimitri stuttered nervously behind him. Felix whipped around to stare at him, and the Executioner’s eyes darted away towards the ground as he bit his lip, hesitant._

_A moment of silence drifted between them, then, a cold shuddering sigh._

_“Could you teach me how to properly kill beasts? The prey of Executioners were not of the kind that roamed the streets, so I have...trouble dealing with the monsters here.”_

_“Clearly,” Felix drew out the world sardonically, remembering his run-in with the pack of werewolves cornering Dimitri at the Cathedral Ward._

_Dimitri seemed to as well, brow furrowed and grip tightening upon the young hunter’s hand. “Would you like to exchange some knowledge? You can teach me how to better fight with beasts and I could show you how to conduct proper combat among men.”_

_“I suppose it would be useful…” Felix peered down at his boots, glistening wet with a mixture of bile, saliva, and blood. The executioner’s unerring gaze was practically tearing right through him, an intense sharpness hiding behind that princely serenity._

_“Fine,” The hunter finally agreed, and slapped Dimitri’s hand away._

_He rubbed his gloves together and gestured for the Executioner to follow him towards Yharnam’s side of the great bridge. As the two boys went, Felix muttered something to himself that drew Dimitri in closer, smiling almost teasingly._

_“What was that?”_

_“Nothing—shut up!”_

_“No, what is it? Tell me.”_

_Felix buried his mouth into the palm of his hand and tasted blood._

_“You would look good in black.”_

* * *

The silver maiden was shifting, gently onward and rippling back, like small waves in a serene pool.

The white moon was quivering; crimson flowers ached painfully and beckoned for her to awake.

Closed eyes began to stir.

But the eyes of men have yet to be opened.

Only the hunter in white.

* * *

**The Hunter’s Dream**

Felix had begun to dream more.

He understood that fact well. Even when he returned to the Hunter’s Dream, he was having visions of his own. And the strangeness of it all was that he had never been overtaken by his memories in such a painful capacity. All these recollections just breaching surface, emerging from the deep blue like some long-submerged creature, baring its fangs, intent to drag something back down with it.

Which was ridiculous. It was Dimitri. He was never far from Felix’s mind.

The hunter staggered out against the rocky steps leading up to the workshop, and sat down for a bit to rest his head. He was alone again, with no signs of his partner anywhere. Not a hint of his presence either here or in Yharnam. It was as though the man had never existed at all and Felix’s memories were a simple delusion.

But it was not Dimitri’s sudden and unexplained disappearance that frightened Felix—it was what it had represented: the gaps in Felix’s memory of what had happened, the sudden occurrence of dreams, and the images of a woman Felix had never met before.

A maiden of silver hair, lilac eyes, and blood. Thrice she had invaded his thoughts, and Felix was wondering if the hunt was getting to him. It had been a long hour, perhaps too—the streets were cleared for the night though the beasts always returned. More hunters were going mad with bloodlust and Felix had to put down one of his seniors whom he trained under back in the old years.

The old man screamed and vomited a pile of blood, hissing and clawing at his neck as though something was congealing right at the base. And then the transformation—gnarly black hair and probing fangs of a mad dog. Perhaps it was only right that the last thing that poor hunter saw was the sheen of a foreign blade of Cainhurst slashing through his throat and outward.

Someone once told him that there was still some life ebbing from the dead, the last bits of consciousness before the fall. This was wrong. Felix never saw any life in those eyes. It was just milky, dull pupils peering up towards a sunless sky. Blood and shattered bones, piercing organs, and a never ending night.

When people die, when beasts die, it was all the same: the terrifying, desperate gasp as their last breath slips away, leaving them to choke on air that will never again return. Even in the hunt, they were made all the same—both by blood and mind.

“ _A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea; accepting all that is and can be.”_ That honeyed voice murmured, a faint memory of bloody lips against his hair. “ _We are all equal in blood and bone—always remember that. Do you hear me, Felix?”_

“I’ll find you, Dimitri. I swear it.”

* * *

**Old Yharnam**

‘ _Long abandoned by the hunters, only the beasts prowl here now in the sanctuary of darkness and ruin.’_

Old Yharnam was an ancient district beneath the valleys of the industrial metropolis that stole its name, perhaps still a city in its own right.

Before Felix had even arrived in Yharnam, the entire region had been ravaged—burned down in a raging hellfire with both man and beast caught in between. Scorches of flame still glowed ominously from beneath the high cliffs of Yharnam, the shrieks of monstrous mutants, deformed from the plague, dulled by distance and apathy.

It was whispered that Old Yharnam was where it started- this plague of beasts. No one was sure exactly how, only that a few infected cases multiplied to hundreds overnight, and Old Yharnam was swept under in the bloody onslaught. Hunters were dispatched by the dozens down into the abyss to slaughter the rising hordes only to be trapped along with their prey in the fallout.

Afterwards, they blockaded the entire city and locked it away so none may disturb the ruins ever again.

Only the beasts remain.

And for years, hunters were forbidden in trespassing through Old Yharnam, but since the beast scourge had been pushed back, the workshop had been calling for a complete cleanse of the entire city, of _every city,_ from the very top to the lowest bottom.

The only hunter that stayed around the Old Yharnam despite the destruction was Leonie. Unlike Felix, who was an outsider from Cainhurst, or Sylvain who worked with the League in the beginning, or even Ingrid who was raised an orphan in the Healing Church after he parents passed, Leonie had all but been born a hunter in the Workshop.

She was there when Felix first arrived in Yharnam, this boisterous young girl that greeted him atop of a pile of werewolves, carrion crows, and huntsmen. She had been a pupil of an infamous hunter known as the Blade Breaker; the Silver-Blooded Huntress she was known as now, with her fiendishly quick reflexes and a natural talent for tracking.

Five long years of endless night, a terribly painful dream, and a tiring, grueling hunt, and Leonie was the only hunter taking on Old Yharnam, and without a partner at that. Sometimes the young woman asked Ingrid or Felix to come and aid her on one or two exhibitions, but most of the time, she handled things on her own.

By the time Felix scaled the clock tower of Old Yharnam, the thin spire jutting out above the sea of sweltering gray smoke and charred houses and churches, Leonie was already awaiting him at top. She was gazing down solemnly at the destroyed city below, one foot on a powder keg. Beyond her, a hazy, bleeding horizon was smudged by low gray clouds hovering above the black city.

“You’re late,” She chided, without turning around.

“You made me trench through the entire fucking courtyard, which you did not clear, by the way,” Felix said, gesturing the bloody visage of guts and bile on his clothes and his blade, “And stood on the highest point of this wretched city, _and_ waited for me to climb all the way up just to tell me that I was late.”

Leonie finally turned around and flashed him a gap-toothed grin. “Did you enjoy the run, good hunter?”

Felix shook his head in disbelief. “I hate you. So much.”

In the beginning, they locked Old Yharnam away and gave the burnt city to the beasts. In an odd definition, it was a utopia—the creatures here lived in utter peace without the threat of human invaders, there neither violence or cruelty found among the roaming, hungry masses, and unlike the world above, the influence of madness had already metamorphosed Old Yharnam into a new world, one without man. And for a while, it was agreed that no hunter other than Leonie should pass over to the forbidden city; no one else really had the skills for such a task, but it was more than that, too.

With time, the world above was gradually losing the influence of monsters, and it was now returning to enemies of old to sate its endless bloodlust.

“It’s not the beasts that roam the streets—they’re harmless to the city above,” Leonie stated, her usual sympathy for the beast-folk of Old Yharnam spilling strongly between her lips; for the longest time, she protected them, only equipping her weapon to take down the despairing monstrosities that tried to creep up from the ruined city. For her to require help now meant something Felix didn’t want to consider too closely.

As if sensing his unease, after a moment, the huntress continued. “What I called you for was help with a particularly foul thing. It lives in the Church of the Good Chalice down below.”

“Considering how deep that church is in this disgusting valley, have you considered it’s going to be too much for the both of us?”

“I was hoping Dimitri would accompany you as well,” She lifted her head and frowned. “But I don’t see him with you.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Felix said truthfully.

The young woman nodded solemnly, eyes drawn downward; as though she’d immediately understood what the other hunter had tragically implied, and by the expression she bore, that she’d already been expecting it, too.

Leonie cracked her wrapped knuckles together and hoisted the small powder keg under her arms.

“Come now, the blood-starved creature waits for us down below. Afterwards, I will tell you what I know.”

Felix raised a brow. “Know about what?”

“Dimitri,” She said simply and that was enough for the other hunter to follow without a word.

* * *

**Old Yharnam – Church of the Good Chalice**

“Wretched thing.”

Leonie hissed under her breath and gave a sharp kick to the blood-soaked creature of loose skin, slumped dead against the desecrated altar. Flaps of stripped flesh clung to its black, twisted body and innards decorating the nearby walls. It was a messy beast.

Felix flicked his hands out harshly towards the floor, blood splattering in violent droplets until his gloves were somewhat dry, though caked solidly near the long fingers. It had been a messy kill. The hunter clenched his fists together as Leonie leaned against a nearby pillar and sighed.

Since their first meeting, Leonie and Felix had always made a personal game of the hunt—a rivalry between the two hunters that absolutely ravaged across the plagued lands with bets on body counts and even proof of greater prey.

Yharnam did not value childhood and yet, Felix always felt much younger when Leonie was around, recollecting the soft fragments of his boyhood through her powerful laugh and friendly mockery. They often collaborated on taking down the more mutated beings that stalked the destroyed towns, though they fought excessively over who got the last kill.

Of course, with age, these games transitioned so effortlessly to pure and utter bloodsport. Felix, who always favored a good competition had, stopped altogether out of fear that the madness of animalistic glee would corrupt him.

Leonie never argued with him on this.

“I must say, it was a bloody good fight,” She remarked with a smirk, wiping away the sludge of red saliva from her bruised chin. “Mind the earlier pun, but it’s been a while since you and I worked together. The famed Vileblood Wolf still has all his teeth, it would seem.”

“Same to you, partner,” Felix said coolly and straightened up. He watched as the huntress stretched out her arms, the muscles probing out from beneath her coat with the deep inclines of a rock’s facade.

“We’re a pair of aces—you and I. It’s only a shame that I can't hold a candle to your usual partner,” Leonie hummed back with a deep solemness, and worked a shoulder around. “I was sincerely hoping with all my heart that he would show up.”

“Why?” Felix asked warily.

Leonie shrugged nonchalantly, though at this point of their friendship, Felix had long since noticed the tells of Leonie’s anxiety- spotted the tension tightening deeply in her form, the way she kept stretching, readying herself for the fight she was certain was coming.

The hunter gripped the hilt of his blade nervously and narrowed his eyes into two thin slits. “You know something, Leonie—what is it? You have to tell me.”

The huntress sighed a long shudder and closed her eyes to dream of something pleasant. “When Dimitri came to aid me last week, I sensed a strange mania from him.”

Felix gritted his teeth. Dimitri had been here? Dimitri was alive and he hadn’t come to Felix-

“Mania? You’re not implying—” He barked out.

“I’m not saying that the hunt or the blood got to him.” She quickly amended. ” Honestly, Dimitri has always been...a little strange since he joined the Workshop. The boy kept talking about the _gods_ he saw all around Yharnam. We all knew he was a bit touched up there, but who isn’t?” Leonie’s eyes opened but she wasn’t looking up or outward; her gaze was thrown to the floor, to the blood that stained her boots. “But last week was strange—stranger than usual for Dimitri.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. It was after he helped me take down a monstrous thing by the graveyard. We sat down to rest our bodies before returning to the Hunter’s Dream. We talked for a bit, but it was just over trivial matters, you know, such as the way after a good hunt. And then...I don’t know what brought it up, but Dimitri started talking about dreams.”

Felix shrugged, holding tighter to his sword, stamping down on his fury. “So what? We hunters dream all the time. I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. What’s so weird about that?”

“Dimitri claimed that the dreams were calling out to him—someone in the dreams was calling out to him.” Leonie rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “I...I don’t remember if he mentioned a name. He kept rambling, Felix—something about a girl and the School of Mensis. By the Old Blood, it was all madness.”

The silence of the old church suddenly felt hostile to Felix. His shoulders lifted and fell heavily with an invisible weight that suffocated him from the outside. By his side, his hand rested on the tip of his blade, a single finger tapping impatiently and with lament.

“You know who it was Dimitri was talking about, don’t you?” Leonie finally said with a tired, resigned expression.

“What else did that fool say?” Felix asked tightly, ignoring the huntress’ question.

“Something about the ‘Wisdom of Byrgenwerth’. He needed to see or find this thing, which should stop the dreams and help him find the girl,” She explained with a hum. “Dimitri did not make it sound like he wanted to go right away. It sounded like more of a suggestion than anything else.”

“I see…”

Leonie’s frown tightened to a thin, sharp frown. “Felix. Don’t you dare think of traveling up to Byrgenwerth. I mean it. They locked up the college and the forbidden woods for a reason. Even Dimitri had enough mind to avoid that accursed area. He’s probably back in Yharnam or maybe Cathedral Ward. I doubt he’s crazy enough to go it alone.”

 _Crazy enough to go it alone._ Felix would have had his doubts too, if he hadn’t just found out Dimitri had been doing just that while Felix searched tirelessly for him.

“I woke up and he was gone. He’s been gone since then, Leonie,” Felix said through his gritted teeth and clenched his hilt tightly. Blood beneath the white of his skin ran hot and boiled like water. “You don’t understand at all. He’s not here. I searched. Everywhere.”

Craziness lost its sting when the entire mad world wanted to eat you alive.

“Felix, I understand your frustration but I don’t feel right letting you go off to the forbidden woods. Hey, maybe by the time you return to the Hunter’s Dream, he’ll be there.”

“No...no, he’s not!”

“He’s not one to leave so abruptly. Maybe you haven’t searched hard enough---”

“Everywhere, Leonie, everywhere. I hunt, I kill, I search—he’s not here!

“Do you even remember what happened? How did you lose him---”

“I don’t remember!” Felix cried, shaking with mad laughter bellowing from his choking throat. “I woke up and he was gone! I don’t know what happened before, only that I somehow separated myself from him. No one has seen him either- but you!” He suddenly stopped laughing and glared with deep and disdainful vexation to Leonie, pent with accusation. “You...I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Dimitri went mad and became one with the beasts, don’t you?”

“Come now, old wolf, there’s no need to get angry,” The huntress said carefully. “I’m not suggesting that—not at all! I merely wonder if this entire thing was a coincidence and that Dimitri is actually back in Yharnam or the Dream. We're all spread so thin… It's so easy to pass by each other these days.”

Leonie walked over and stood by him. She touched his shaking arm, and said with great assurance and an unexpected sympathy, soft and drifting like the melody of a music box, “It’ll be alright, I promise.”

Felix sucked in a rattling breath, feeling like this desecrated church, bereft save for all the blackness that had crawled within.

“He’s been gone for too long.” He peered around fearfully and spoke in a lowly whisper. “I...I have been having terrible dreams.”

“Don’t we all? The hunt is never ending. The night is never ending,” She said with a false tenderness, trying to hide the climbing fear of her voice. After a while, Leonie patted the hunter’s back with sisterly assurance and gestured to the mouth of the desolate, bloody church.

“Go home, Felix. Go back to the dream and continue the hunt. You will find him once again.”

But home was neither the Hunter’s Dream or the dreadfully accursed city of Yharnam.

Home laid in the heart of the absent hunter in white.

* * *

🌓 _**First Quarter**_ 🌓

_Dimitri did look good in black._

_Perhaps even better than Felix or the other two new hunters that joined the Workshop. Of course, when the Executioner arrived at the Healing Church Workshop to pledge himself to the hunt, he stood out like a splinter in skin, a holy figure draped in pure white amidst a crowd of grimly armed heathens—the last liberator in a cursed and ungodly city. But the Workshop was a practical lot, unlike the Healing Church, and while white to them was simply a bad mix in a bloody and gruesome hunt, perhaps even an invitation for more danger, they saw the willing flesh within and took him into their dark arms._

_In an ink-black long coat, draped like strips of physical shadow around the young man’s strong figure, lined in royal blue, Dimitri stepped out of the Workshop and onto the wet, rocky steps of the Hunter’s Dream._

_He lifted his golden head and stared out to the garden, to where they were awaiting him._

_And at that very moment, all the air in Felix’s lung was consumed by flame._

_There one moment, gone the next- an abrupt choke tried to crawl up his scorched throat, but Felix smothered it behind the glove of his hand. He shook his head, ascertained that nothing was wrong with him, and remembered where he was. Reminded himself to_ breathe _._

_The hunter gave a low cough into his fist and looked away. “Well, I suppose it’s better than your stupid church clothes…”_

_“Are you kidding me? He looks like the finest dressed killer in all of Yharnam and beyond.” Quipped Sylvain with a wink. “The vermin are quaking outright jealously!”_

_He was one of the new hunters, a smiling boy from the League—a strange organization located near the Forbidden Woods that just showed up one red afternoon on the steps of the Hunter’s Dream. No one knew where Sylvain had come from or how he even had access to the dream in the first place. All he claimed was that he’d gotten lost, though Felix had always seen the cleverness behind the fool’s mask._

_Dimitri’s pale, handsome face flushed pink and he glanced down at his new hunter’s uniform. “Really, you think so?” He asked rather nervously, pulling at one black buttoned cuff._

_“It’s definitely suitable for this line of work. I still don’t know how you were able to get around Yharnam or the Cathedral Ward at all with your other clothes,” Ingrid said with a short nod._

_Like many of the hunters of the Workshop, she was just a civilian who took up arms against the scourge. An orphan taken in by the church, despite how domesticated her background seemed- especially in the face of a former Executioner, a Cainhurst refugee, and a League hunter- Ingrid was considered the most promising of them all. Near equal to Leonie in skill and strength._

_While Felix would never ever tell her this, if the Workshop had more hunters like her, the scourge would have ended years ago._

_“Well, Felix?”_

_“Hm?” The hunter sounded nonchalantly as though he were not staring wide-eyed and intensely at how criminally sharp Dimitri looked in his black hunter’s uniform—belts, silver, and all._

_“What do you think?” The blue-eyed boy asked innocently with a slight tilt of his head._

_Felix frowned thinly and scoffed. “Does it matter? A hunter must hunt. And he must dress appropriately for the job. Don’t let your vanity cloud the reason for you being here.”_

_“Aren’t you pleasant?” Sylvain said in a laughing voice. “It’s still a big change from what you showed up in, Dimitri. I have to agree with Ingrid on this—by the Old Blood, how did you do any work in those priest robes?”_

_“Well, the Executioners did not hunt beasts,” Dimitri explained with a direct tone that ended all discussion on the topic—which Felix was thankful for, and continued on much gently. “But that matters not. We’re all here to put an end of the scourge together regardless of where we are from.”_

_“Which reminds me,” Ingrid said and touched her chin in quizzical thought. “They told us that since we’re junior hunters, we have to work in pairs! I suppose it makes sense considering how young we all are, and the scourge has taken up nearly all of Yharnam by now.”_

_Sylvain yawned and stretched his arms out over his head. “You know, the League was all about cooperation! We always killed together—that’s what made the whole thing tolerable.”_

_Dimitri’s eyes pivoted to the other hunter, and it was only then Felix realized he’d been staring at Felix the entire time. “If I may ask, why did you leave?”_

_Sylvain shrugged. “I don’t know—I guess I needed a change of scenery. Besides, the League wasn’t really focused on pushing back this bestial menace we find ourselves in. I’d rather see myself actually doing something.”_

_“And not in the arms of some harlot?” Ingrid suggested ruefully with her arms crossed._

_“Why not both?” Sylvain said with a wink. When the young huntress scoffed angrily and started off towards the gardens, the red-headed boy shot up and followed after her, throwing out quick and flimsy apologies to an unresponsive back._

_Only Dimitri and Felix remained. They lingered, with the blue-eyed hunter standing tall upon the rocky steps and the other watching him from below. Felix, who always hated direct eye contact, could not help but lock gazes with Dimitri; the other boy was already staring at him again, radiating a natural holiness that seemed to engulf the entire area in a bizarre serenity, almost sleepy in its potency._

_It was like a dream._

_He stretched out his hand—the black glove settled over those long fingers so nicely, and gave a small, beckoning twitch._

_“Partners?” Dimitri asked in a near whisper, an unspoken intimacy in the paces between them. He was flushed, as if from the cold, blue eyes shining curiously like the sun off ice._

_Felix took a moment before he returned a smirk; the hunter stepped forward and took Dimitri’s hand in a strong, pressing squeeze._

_“Try to keep up then...partner.”_

_Dimitri squeezed back._

_“Of course, partner!”_

_Above them, a low, white moon observed closely as their witness. And so below, a field of eternally youthful blooms watched on, as the two bound themselves together in the bond of the hunt._

_Felix’s lungs felt like they might give out._

* * *

The silver maiden was still sleeping, though it was a sleep disturbed.

The moon was still shining, though it reflected colors other than the purity of white.

Men knew better not to uncover secrets hidden away with reason.

A voice beckoned from below, a hand reached out desperately to grasp at the Gods.

None of them offered a hand back.

* * *

**Cathedral Ward – Oedon Chapel**

Oedon Chapel was one of the few safe havens during the beast hunt, housing a number of townsfolk from both Yharnam and Cathedral Ward. While beasts and killers alike stalked through the streets—creatures on four legs, furred and all, and the pale-faced former church servants with eyes as black as the sunken abyss- the Chapel kept these evils at bay with the ever-present miasma of holy incense.

While it did not bear the most pleasant smell, an earthy, murky scent reminiscent of old libraries and damp moss, the incense snuffed around the entire chapel like a shield—not even the hovering phantoms with their steel canes dared to step near the holy steps.

Felix covered his nose as he walked inside.

The haunting incense filled the chapel thicky, laying low underneath the looming rafters, the torn draperies hung from the ceiling fluttering lightly like captive wraiths. Massive jars of the burning scent lined the carved walls, the claws of beasts divine and demonic coiled and reaching from their golden captivity, standing sentinel over the countless flickering candles that filled the room with a hazy, comforting glow. The pews were packed, as always, filled with the ever-listless living even now, long after their church crumbled to dust.

There were still some townsfolk here, mumbling about and praying at the various statues of long-dead saints that littered the chapel. Standing in the center where the moonlight shot in from the ceiling above was the familiar image of a fair-haired, elegant form—Ingrid. It was always so easy to spot her for she somehow seemed to carry a mild light everywhere she went. In her tea green eyes, her beautiful and lethal swan-headed cane.

Our Lady of Swans, she had been dubbed by the townsfolk. Fitting, the last saint of a dying faith to be a hunter.

The huntress was standing next to a woman draped in white, from head to toe, like a devout pilgrim. Her thin veil covered her face but Felix already recognized that it was the chapel’s keeper, Mercedes. She and Ingrid had been close companions for years, the holy woman originally a member of the Healing Church who used to work at the Grand Cathedral with the vicars. Now, she was merely a caretaker of the poor, the displaced, during the longest night of their lives, a benevolent guardian in this dream never-ending.

Mercedes was the one who looked up first when Felix emerged from the darkness and into the glowing light. The chapel keeper clasped her hands together and gave a solemn bow as Ingrid threw her gaze down to the ground. Felix immediately sensed the choking tension and stopped just right along the edge where the light split off from the chilly darkness.

“It’s good to see you, Felix,” Mercedes greeted in a mother’s soft voice. She was always so serene, even as the world around her burned and thrashed violently to its death. “Your good health brings me much joy.”

“Good health? I never took you for a jester, sister,” Felix rebuked gently, without any edge.

“But still, you are here with us, safe and sound. I am relieved, nonetheless.” Mercedes smiled. “How goes your hunt, dear wolf?”

“I just returned from Old Yharnam. Leonie and I practically fell to this disgusting blood-covered, gut torn creature below the valley. An eyesore, if I’ve ever seen one.”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it? The more you kill, the more they come. A horrendous cycle of blood and martyrdom, all for naught.” She clasped her hands together, eyes slipping closed, as if in prayer. “The only thing we can do is cling onto each other on this long night for good. The only thing we have is each other.”

Felix’s eyes flickered. He recalled a distant time when Dimitri had said the same thing. “If you say so.” The hunter said tiredly.

The hunter’s longing stare then pivoted from the holy sister to his fellow huntress. It was here that he fully noticed that Ingrid not once looked at him, not even to throw a single glance of concern in his direction; if Dimitri had been a mother hen, Ingrid was the disgruntled nursemaid. Nothing slipped past her, and even at her surliest, she would never look away from someone else's pain.

With this, he frowned deeply and stepped forward until he was fully basking in the moonlight.

“Ingrid, you look ill,” Felix stated dryly, crossing his arms.

“It’s been...a long night,” She said and closed her eyes.

The huntress swallowed deeply and stepped further back into the shadows of the chapel. It was only there that Felix finally noticed a large satchel by the young woman’s feet. It slumped against the ground with a very small but visible pool of dark liquid, seeping across the marble floor and tainting Ingrid’s boots.

Felix breathed very slowly through his nose with intervals of three, and asked with an unshakable calmness, “What is in the bag?”

Ingrid did not answer. Instead, she knelt down to the satchel, her movements mechanical and disjointed like the rusted gears of a clock. Mercedes was silent, hovering in chilled expectation like a solemn specter, a sickness settling over the three that made Felix weary to discover the terrible secret he was about to be made privy to.

Finally, Ingrid grabbed something audibly wet from the bag and pulled it out. In the darkness, Felix could not see what it was, only that it trailed liquid across the floor in small drops. Ingrid stared at it with some heavy consideration before bringing it up towards the light.

Mercedes shielded her eyes with the back of her hand; Felix stiffened, white-cold.

A head of a hunter.

Not one Felix recognized, probably one from the earlier years of the Workshop. Now, they were just a head; bits of skin and the serrated rope of spine spilling from where the neck used to be, a blueish swollen tongue over gray, cracked lips, and a pair of milky eyes—gazing off dimly to an unresponsive heaven.

Felix finally averted his ill gaze away and stepped back into the cool, smokey darkness. Everything throbbed hotly in his vision.

“There are more in the bag,” Ingrid said quietly, nodding over to the ground.

“Why did you collect all these?” Felix asked in a voice, tight with both anger and disgust.

“Because I needed proof when I told you.”

“Tell me what?”

Ingrid and Mercedes looked at each other—the chapel keeper closing her eyes and clasped her hands in a silent prayer and the huntress’ green eyes, dulled over from years of killing work, riveted over to Felix’s in burning accusation.

She sighed deeply and let the head fall from her hands. It rolled back over to the satchel and landed at the stub of its neck—staring right at Felix.

Disgustingly blemished eyes of pink and white.

“Dimitri has gone rogue,” Ingrid finally confessed hoarsely, wiping something wet from the corner of her eyes. “He has killed these men, and more, and ran off somewhere.”

Everything within Felix revolted in that moment. “This isn’t proof. You’re just showing me a bunch of heads—do you realize how many body parts I've seen in the last five years I worked here in Yharnam? Legs, arms, heads, ears— enough parts for a bloody doll, if you should desire. This is nothing—could have been a beast for all we know,” He hissed.

“Felix, they were beheaded. I did not not find the heads alone—I found them slumped on the ground with their bodies. And you know how Dimitri kills. In fact, you of all people should know!” She snarled back with vitriol. The huntress’ green eyes were razed in rage and desperation, fingers tight around her cane, chest heaving as if her very heart were attempting to take flight.

Felix looked on coolly, though his own heart was pumping unnaturally fast. In the five years they had worked together, Dimitri had established himself as an unconventional hunter, perhaps, moreso, tied to his methods of killing. With both beasts and men alike, the boy always had a preference for beheading, something he attributed fondly to his training with the Executioners. They were gone now, but the gruesome methodicalness of their combat was so deeply instilled in Dimitri that Felix knew that it would never leave him; a second nature as undeniable as a wolf’s ravenening hunger, a lion’s dominance.

He still remembered the first time they hunted alone, as junior hunters, as Felix-and-Dimitri, as _them_ ; his partner had hacked off the head of a huntsman—cleanly, Dimitri’s rifle spear sliced into the short neck before coming out the other end with a gutting choke—the head soaring across the cobbles before landing right at Felix’s feet and staring up at him.

The hunter almost threw up right then and there, especially once he set eyes on Dimitri; his smiling, princely face twisted in sick glee as the body behind him staggered aimlessly in search of something now lost, and collapsed wetly against the stone. And for that very moment, Felix did not recognize him.

And yet it was something he’d never look away from in the years to follow.

Perhaps, instead, he should have been looking closer.

Felix exhaled out from his teeth and dug a hand into his shorn hair, eyes nervously settling at the bloody bag in the corner, rolling back to the bloody head after a moment. It too was staring at him.

“It can’t be…” He merely whispered and closed his eyes.

A warm hand caressed his cheek and Mercedes drew in close, rubbing the hunter’s strained back in small, comforting circles. Her touch was oddly healing, though everyone always attributed it to her time with the Healing Church. In the past years, she split her time between the chapel and the clinic located in the upper parts of Central Yharnam—both a devout worshiper and a healer of men. It was only here that Felix felt the weakness in Mercedes’ hand, how it quivered a bit against his coat.

“I’m so sorry, Felix. Truly,” Mercedes started kindly. “I know how much he means to you---”

“We work together—don’t make it sound like he mattered to me,” Felix suddenly snapped coldly, amber eyes flashing with denial.

But the chapel keeper did not retreat. Ingrid was watching them closely, her mouth opening and closing with the hesitation of an order. Finally, the huntress sniffed dryly before utterly very softly, “If that’s that case, would you perform your duty?”

Felix’s duty. The one he pledged himself, taking on the burden alone. On his breast, the rune hummed softly, as though it had sensed Ingrid’s implication and began to fluctuate with life and hunger. The hunter covered it with his gloved hand and stared sharply at the huntress.

“Would you be able to live, condemning him to death?”

“If he’s gone mad, he would want us to set him free. I know Sylvain would say the same,” She stated simply, but the shakiness in her voice betrayed the grief within.

Sylvain was always better than Ingrid was of hiding his true feelings, and sometimes Felix wondered if his cheery cruelty was all at face-value. But at least, Ingrid usually spoke for the both of them, even if her emotions were so plain and evident.

But only Felix was capable of hunting down another hunter.

Everyone else was only supposed to lend their skills to the hunt itself. It was so easy—hardly a chore even, to slaughter mindless beasts without a second thought. A daily pesticide that subjected itself on the imagery of blood and bestial madness.

But the matter of killing one’s very own kin—a brother of the hunt, because madness had overtaken them, that alone had stolen away any remnants of pride in Felix. He only managed to carry out this brutal duty with Dimitri at his side. The steady presence of his partner a salve upon his aching, chained soul, cool relief from the hellish, grieving heat of the mantle kinslayer.

Only now it was Dimitri’s turn. And there would be no relief.

“He went to the Forbidden Woods,” The hunter finally confessed with a voice he did not recognize.

Mercedes drew back with a breathy gasp and covered her mouth.

“No, not the Forbidden Woods! That place is unholy and vile, with...ungodly creatures beyond crazed dogs and deformed souls. True, pure evil lies there. Oh, Felix, you simply must not go there!” The chapel keeper said frantically, beseeching gaze shifting to Ingrid for support.

But the Lady of Swans was strangely calm, a chilled serenity falling over her expression with a glint of brevity. Ingrid was always the most rational of their group, the most grounded, the most human. She cried the first time she had to kill one of the mad townsfolk and could not hold her weapon properly for a week. Five years later and nothing changed except the strength of her resolve. It only got steelier with age.

“You’re going to go hunt him down. Right, Felix?”

“If not me, then who?” The hunter spat, ignoring the swarming pain threatening to break away behind his burning eyes; he gripped the hilt of his blade—Glenn’s blade, given to him as a reminder of home, and he heaved harshly. “It might as well be me...no one else would prove a match for him, anyhow.”

“But why the Forbidden Woods? It’s practically suicide to go there! They closed off that area off for a reason, Felix.” Mercedes said breathlessly.

“I’m still dreaming. If anything should happen, I’ll awake back at the Hunter’s Dream like before…,” He muttered with an uncharacteristic shakiness—a nervousness seldom and alien to him that everyone in the chapel sensed.

The Forbidden Woods, a cursed name spoken among the people seldomly, the mere utterance of such paralyzing as pure and undiluted electricity. It was a place so far off from Yharnam that one could not possibly see the tall church towers from the blackness of the woods; another ravaged world unchained and floating somewhere distant.

From what Felix had learned, the Forbidden Woods was an enormous and nearly endless forest reigned by unspeakable and unknowable evil. And in the heart of that tortuous woods, nestled in the aftermath of a tragedy was the Byrgenwerth College—where everything began: the Old Blood, the Healing Church, everything. Forbidden knowledge to man, instinctual knowledge to madmen; all protected by a haunted, desolate place that even the finest, fiercest of hunters would not dare step a foot inside.

But Dimitri was not simply fierce, or fine. He was _the_ fiercest, _the_ finest.

And, perhaps, he was just plain mad too.

“How would you even get there? You would need a password to enter through the front gate.” Ingrid pointed out matter-of-fact. “Unless Sylvain would still know something. The League did come from that area…”

“It’s been five years since he left,” Felix murmured. “Besides, they must've changed the gate’s password since then.”

A moment of thought passed between them. Felix was just as puzzled as Ingrid for they never ventured anywhere near the Forbidden Woods under strict orders. In fact, the only one who passed through that area and back was Sylvain and that was during his time with the League. He often teased everyone on their sniffling fear of the woods though his jovial mockery usually trailed off to a shivering, disquieted tone—terrible memories flooding plainly on his face.

Finally, Mercedes sighed and touched Felix’s arm delicately.

“I know a way.”

“Hm?” He and Ingrid both uttered in unison.

“Back when I worked at the clinic, there was a door that led down to a system of caves located beneath the Forbidden Woods.”

Ingrid made a fist and brought it down upon the gloved palm of her other hand. “There you go. Mercedes can let you through the clinic and—”

“I’m afraid not, Ingrid,” The chapel keeper said, shaking her head remorsefully. “As you know, I no longer run the clinic anymore as I transferred all my duties here. There is a new master now—an apothecary from a distant land.”

"I’m sure if I ask him, he’ll let me through. I am a hunter of the Workshop, am I not?” Felix grunted.

“Most do not recognize your organization anymore since the Healing Church fell. But it won’t hurt to ask him.”

“Felix.”

The hunter reluctantly greeted the sharpened gaze of Ingrid. She bit the corner of her lips and choked dryly—an instinct to cry, carried on since she first joined the Workshop. The woman used to sob over the littlest of things from having to put down mad villagers to even stabbing a werewolf. However, tragically, everyone was five years older—long past from childhood, and Ingrid’s tears were all dried up.

The ever-building heat behind Felix’s eyes rejected that he’d been able to do the same.

“You’ll...you’ll kill him, won’t you? Give him a merciful rest from this long, endless night?”

“Yes.” Felix lied.

* * *

**Central Yharnam – The Old Clinic**

On the upper side of Central Yharnam, overlooking the blood-red sunsets and midnight blue evenings of the city—black silhouettes of church spires jutting against the sky—was the old clinic. It had once been on the forefront of the efforts to combat the scourge, however, with the sheer number of patients, the entire building was so vastly overfilled with the infected that the first caretaker had to close the clinic down out of fear for a potential outbreak.

Eventually, some two years into the plague, Mercedes took over, much wiser than her predecessor in admitting survivors for treatment, even outsiders like Felix though this decision was incredibly controversial. But she would transfer her duties to Oedeon when the need for assistance there became greater, leaving the clinic to the wilds once more. From what Felix last remembered, that old center was left abandoned in dust, broken medical equipment, and the faint memory of rotting flesh.

So, it came across as a great surprise to the hunter when Mercedes had revealed that an apothecary had moved in. Not that the presence of a herbalist would do any good this late into the plague, with nearly all of Yharnam’s population dead and gone.

Felix was only hoping that the mysterious new occupant would allow him passage through. A few times in the past, he and Dimitri received treatment from Mercedes there but she only allowed them as far as the operating room. Everything in the back was locked up for privacy reasons.

The black hunter stepped through the decrepit waiting room, dust motes swarming the air, and peered all around him, the old aching smell of rotting wood pervasive throughout the space. Operating tables littered the room, cold shapes grim like open caskets, accompanied by the tall forms of transfusion drips long-since sucked dry, and clustered in the far back corners were slumping, overloaded bookshelves, spilling medical textbooks and diagrams.

Yellowed paper and bloodstains covered the floor, messengers shivering through the cracked floorboards baring open messages from other hunters, most proclaiming that the clinic was open for business.

Felix toed an old book out of his path, watching the centipede that emerged from within wind long and lackadaisical as it crawled away to another spent volume, hardly seeming bothered by the intrusion.

It certainly did not look like it was open.

Felix took a deep breath and made his way up the steps to the door leading into the inner clinic. Here in the past, Mercedes would greet the hunters at the door before letting them in. But the door remained closed otherwise, a precaution against the scourge and the infected.

What took Felix off guard was that the inner chamber door was already open. Just a crack, but it was enough for the visiting hunter to push it open and peer into the empty hallway.

The apothecary was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it was only instinctual that Felix gripped the hilt of his blade, pulling it out a bit as he trenched down the creaking darkness of the clinic—it was normal for shopkeepers to suddenly be snatched away or even fall victim to the plague. Perhaps Mercedes’ successor was unfortunate.

However, Felix did not get that sense of abandonment when he walked into the main foyer where the room split into two huge wings.

Adversely, there was proof of life everywhere— plants, living, cultivated plants, basking in the cool moonlight flooding through the wide windows. Some were huge and stretched from their pots and climbed along the back walls onto the ceiling, others particularly foreign in nature with spines and thorns and leaves in colors Felix could not describe, and still yet more throbbed and twitched with life, shivering as the black hunter drew close. In these bookshelves dwelled botany studies, these walls, pinned specimen drawings, and even a journal laid idly on an overcrowded desk, overan by beads, twine, fabric, needles. In the cabinets, a myriad of bottled concoctions of every shape and size glowed from within, bits and pieces of strange foliage floating inside their glass conservatories.

As Felix stared quizzically at them, mind bouncing to a million different places at once, the reflection of a hardened chest approached Felix’s back in the glass pane; the hunter whipped around, brandishing his sword only for a strong hand to catch him halfway.

But there is no coming violence. Just a small action to stop his sword. The hand pushes the blade down into its sheath and Felix peered onto a stranger’s face.

The man was, for one, enormously tall—taller than any person Felix had ever seen in his life. Taller than Dimitri, even. He had dark skin, especially compared to the average sickly pale Yharnamite, platinum eyes and silver hair—like the soft rays of moonlight through the windows, with a fierce and stony face.

Despite this, the stranger did not look much older than Felix. Mouth somewhat twisted into a perpetual frown. Clean-shaven, with several small golden hoops dangling from his ears, his attire consisted of a gardener’s sturdy apron on top of a white undershirt, and a strange multi-hued scarf nestled around a thick, muscular neck. Nothing at all from this stranger seemed to call to Yharnam in the slightest. In short, a foreigner.

“Are you…the apothecary?” Felix managed to utter once he composed himself.

“Yes,” The giant man replied. His voice was deep, resounding, like the beat of a tribal drum. He continued staring at Felix. “And you are?”

“A hunter of the Workshop, who needs to access your trap door—right now,” Felix said brusquely. He even furrowed his brows and stared back at the apothecary, daring for a challenge.

The windows behind them darkened with the coming of midnight; the apothecary smiled rather condescendingly at Felix, narrowed his silver moonlight eyes, and placed his hand on his chin in pique interest.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” He started, a hint of an accent in his tone, spiced but not distorting the words, “Are you, by any chance, Felix?”

He blinked rapidly in surprise. “I am. What’s it to you?”

“You fit Dimitri’s description, right down to the...sharp personality. The Vileblood Wolf,” The apothecary chuckled, the gravely, dread-inducing sound of an earthquake. "It suits you."

The mention of his partner’s name along with his own infamous title hit a nerve within Felix, and he riveted his gaze away to the crystal blue windows, to the plants that watched him suffer, a most silent audience.

“Dimitri is a close friend of mine,” The apothecary explained in a careful tone as if he sensed the hunter’s growing apprehension. He even smiled subtly, though it was equally unnerving. “I worked as a herbalist for the Executioners—Dimitri always came to me for medicine when he was with them.”

“So...have you seen him lately?”

“No, not in a while, I’m afraid. I thought that perhaps his duties have called him elsewhere. But your presence here alone suggests otherwise.”

“He’s...missing,” Felix confessed with a perfectly calm voice, though the way his shoulders hunched betrayed the hunter’s wanted composure. “I need to find him.”

“Find him,” The apothecary repeated coldly. The giant man stepped back, allowing Felix the gratitude of space. Suddenly, his entire figure sagged with fatigue as though he had once been strung up, a great lengthy plant on a trellis, and gazed at the hunter with dulled spite. “I know your line of work. Do you intend to do more than just _find_ him?”

Felix sniffed. “They want me to kill him—everyone thinks he’s gone mad.”

“Ah,” The other man merely said, and his face darkened with an oppressive thought. “Is that what you think?”

“I...I don’t know. I just want to see him again.”

The two men stood in the quiet and wide space of the foyer, the wings of the building stretching far into the darkness, illuminated only by breadcrumb trails of candlelight. The night skies of Yharnam, always so mirthless with the pure glow of the moon and an endless horizon, the passing of black clouds the only break in this unnatural stage play of never ending night.

Finally, the apothecary placed a hand on his solid chest and did a small bow. “My name is Dedue, by the way.”

“And I need to get to the trap door,” Felix quipped once again, brushing off Dedue’s greeting.

“You’re not one for conversation. That is fair. But I cannot let you through.”

“And why not?”

“Because you are ill-fit for what lies ahead.”

Felix practically snorted and he gave a short, spiteful laugh. “Are you suggesting that I’m not skilled enough to handle the Forbidden Forest?”

“Yes,” Dedue said bluntly, without malice. The apothecary tilted his head once again, a sense of curiosity flashing beneath the soft silver of his sharp eyes. “But I would like to help you—as long as you would give me your ear for just a short while. Otherwise, you will never make it.”

“You dare underestimate me?” The hunter sneered sharply with widened eyes. “You probably never even killed a beast in your life, no less stepped a good foot outside on the streets.”

“I used to serve the Executioners.”

“And they killed _people_ —correct that, _vilebloods_. As if that dead lot ever did the same things the Workshop did—they abandoned the city to go fight in some useless war! Don’t you have better things to do than to undermine me?”

“You won’t make it through the caves without my help,” Dedue reiterated simply. “I just want to speak with you, and then I’ll give you aid.”

“I don’t need your help, _flower keeper_ ,” Felix snarled, his voice dripping poisonously with mockery and derision.

Dedue attempted to produce a smile on his face, which made it look sour and spiteful, and nodded very slowly to the fuming hunter before him. A unity of oppressive shadow and pale moonlight flooded the tall man’s figure as though he were a phantom conjoined, and a ghostly mischief flashed upon his expression.

“Very well then,” Dedue said and gestured to the wing behind Felix. “If you go a little further down, there will be the door. Take it and continue down the small ladder until you reach a hole. There should then be a longer ladder that will take you directly to the caves—they in turn will lead you up to the Forbidden Forest.”

Felix sighed in relief and shook his head. “Finally—useful information. Thank you,” He said gruffly and turned coldly to head off towards the wing.

As the hunter stalked off, he felt the cold, piercing stare of the apothecary behind him. Had he turned around, even for just a second, he would have seen the rueful smile on that stony face.

**The Hunter’s Dream**

In the entire five years of Felix's time with the Hunter’s Workshop, not once had he experienced a more slow and utterly excruciating death than the one he experienced in the caves beneath the Forbidden Forest.

Every death was pain, even the quickest ones. But for some reason, this one was the longest. Hours. Days. Weeks. Years. Time’s bitter reign slowed to a crippling halt the second the poor, ignorant hunter stepped foot into that shallow, pulsing bile-lake that spread out thinly across the cavern.

From afar, it simply looked like waste, probably funneled in from bad waters of the Forbidden Forest. However, the sinister beast of fire that soared up from beneath his worn boots and up to his face took him over right then and there; Felix did not even think about moving as he staggered back and gasped for air that never came, scratching desperately at his neck until trails of blood cascaded down his heaving throat and coat, the hunter’s blurring sight going black and murky as the cave consuming him.

The last thing Felix remembered was collapsing into that devouring, hungry lake and the black waters eating him up, flesh to bone and heart and soul.

And then Felix woke up.

When Felix was thrust back into consciousness, he laid in the garden of the Hunter’s Dream, and he curled up into a small ball among the gentle white flowers and shut his eyes tightly—an instinct from the softness of childhood to hide away and seek warmth after a terrifying experience with the adult world. Death had become scarily new to him again for to die so painfully—the feeling of fire peeling away at the raw skin, of liquid eating at him from the inside out, the outside in, devoured in entirety. Felix had never wanted to hold someone more than now.

The hunter eventually lifted his head up, feeling the cold sweat of fear drip down the side of his skull. The Hunter’s Dream never moved, never changed, still so white and dim with the gentle light of the moon and the glow of the flowers; the wetness from a rain that never came, it left the whole realm in a cool mist.

Felix peered all around him desperately like a child lost, and called out in a broken, terrified voice for a person he knew would not answer back—a dying worshiper, calling again and again for the God that never replied.

“Dimitri...”

The name carried on through the flowers and across the endless ocean abyss beyond the black-iron fences, echoing in eternity like a bell. But the Hunter’s Dream stayed very still, unchanged and unheeding by the mention of one of their own.

Like all things, the sound eventually died, the call unreturned.

But in its place- a small crumbling noise.

Felix opened his eyes in time to see his faithful cluster of messengers pushing up from the gravel a short distance away. He stumbled up and over to them, peering down to their dear ghoulish faces in search of companionship.

The messengers quaked delightfully at the familiar sight of the hunter and brought forth another vial of Dimitri’s personal blood vial—the one he always left behind for Felix, wrapped up in pretty cloth and strung together like a courting gift.

Felix merely took a second before he snatched it from the cheerful messengers; the hunter tore the cloth off from the top and downed the entire vial of blood, even if he should have saved it for another time. His action was selfish, it was needy, it was desperate, but his thirst went beyond the absolution to quench for an equal standing- he yearned, he mourned, and he craved in anguish.

He wanted any part of Dimitri possible; if his partner’s presence was to be snatched from him, then at least the sweet liquor of the man’s blood should suffice. How many times had Felix gotten drunk from Dimitri’s vials alone?

In the beginning, he despised the taste of blood, a reaction nurtured from his life in Cainhurst, where the decadence of Old Blood heightened the court’s greed viciously- vile they were, in blood and in deed. As he became older, he refused to touch the cruor, not even to save his own life. But, in the chaos of it all, a memory of the golden-haired boy with starry eyes offering a small pint of his own blood for healing. It was sweet like honey and went down like medicine to the soul. Perhaps it was his own memory romanticizing what truly happened for Dimitri’s blood was no more different than anyone else, at least in terms of healing properties.

But it was for Felix and Felix alone. He never once saw Dimitri offer his personal blood vial to Ingrid or Sylvain, and the rush of the thought had Felix high as if he’d inhaled it like smoke.

Once the hunter had drunk every last bit of blood from the glass, he wiped his mouth clean and stared down at the empty bottle. Warm intoxication rushed hotly through his body and up his head like a sudden fever, and he gave a coarse laugh as he stumbled back to the garden. Everything was spinning slowly in a universal rotation, a magnetism of colors washing across his vision like a ruined painting. Felix stared up into the endless midnight sky with searching eyes, and then, with a small groan, fell back into the flowers.

The weary hunter drifted away to a loving slumber, his mind leaving his adult body and flying upwards to the watching moon on the blissful wings of sweet, childhood memories.

* * *

🌔 _**Waxing Gibbous**_ 🌔

_The hysterical hag’s cries cut off in a choking gurgle as her throat split opened into a bloody grin upon Chikage— but the carnage didn’t die soundless, hounds baying in the distance in mad, scurrying packs, and more women cackled wildly, lurching forward from their hiding spots; scythes and spades dragged malevolently across the blood-soaked soil towards the hunched pair limping on the leafy overpass._

_Felix’s frantic gaze kept shifting from the approaching crowd with their torches and rusted hayforks to Dimitri who was on his knees. The boy was still fixated on the empty space in front of him and clutching his bleeding side, torn through by an invisible swing by some hand Felix could not see. The young hunter was heaving with breath drowned by blood, and attempted to struggle to his feet a few times, filth and sweat dripping in unification down Dimitri’s pale face down to the soil, and he shook his head frantically._

_Felix shot up, lighting up a Molotov cocktail, and flung it into the encroaching crowd. The rotted leaf-covered streets caught the blaze, aching flames shooting skyward—the dogs drove back, howling wildly and falling back down against the rocks, the mad grave women throwing their hands up as their long dresses caught fire and shrieking like steel in a press._

_In that moment of fluttering, brightly lit chaos, Felix hoisted Dimitri’s arm over his shoulder and quickly heaved away, ignoring the gruesome cries from down below._

_The boys staggered far into the woods, rushing forward as best they could though Dimitri’s cumbersome weight against Felix’s side stalled their movements to but a scraping crawl. A trail of dark blood ran a grisly, brackish river from the boy’s open abdomen wound and stained the dirt, every step tearing hisses from him harshly._

_The crowd was still somewhere near-off, the flashing glow of their torches traveling through the trees like faithful pilgrims in the night, never far behind. Laughter, iron striking against the rocks, and the roars of feral dogs pulsed hot panic through Felix’s legs as he dragged his bleeding partner further into the forest._

_Dimitri kept muttering wildly to himself, the mark of a dying man’s delusion—_ it was there, it was there! _Whatever Dimitri saw left him cold and feverish, a demon naked to the eye with the exception of this strange boy who claimed to see Great Ones._

_At some point in the black and chaos, Felix spotted a hidden grove off to the side, and without a moment’s consideration, the hunter staggered down into the overgrown foliage, hauling his partner after him. Leaves and moss hung down in a heavy curtain, grown from the top of a large sloping rock, and the pair nestled quickly inside and underneath—Dimitri’s limp and cold body slumped against Felix’s exhausted figure, and the latter hugged his partner tightly, amber eyes tracking the many torch flames passing them on the main forest path._

_Felix held his breath, even as the last flames flickered away and the sound of laughter faded into the far distance; only once he was sure they were gone, did he pull Dimitri’s heaving body up against the rock._

_The boy’s black hunter’s coat was soaked from the stomach down and it clung wetly to his wounded figure. His usually sunny hair was matted with dirt and blood, and his blue eyes swam in a sea of red, the white of his left eye drowning in crimson and gazed outward into nothingness. His abdomen was sliced through from shoulder to hip in a clean strike, done by something sharper than a hag’s farming tool or a dog’s bite—something close to a fine sheen blade. A wound too deep for them to patch up alone._

“ _Dimitri, what happened back there?” Felix asked, still disorientated from the running._

_The pale hunter closed and opened his eyes repeatedly, pupils rolling as if trying to locate his voice through a fog. Felix’s strong hand clutched his, and after a moment, Dimitri clutched back, a sigh of relief passed through his bleeding lips._

“ _There was...there was a thing. I’m not sure how to describe it! A-A walking shadow—tall, skinny, with wild hair and two tiny white eyes. It...It had a sickle, Felix—it, it... cut through me good.”_

“ _Dimitri, there wasn’t anything in front of you. You killed one of the hags and then started screaming.”_

“ _It cut me. Look, see?” The hunter brought his wet glove up to his face and chuckled madly. “Didn’t you see it, Felix? It moved like lightning and howled like a dog. I killed it and it just disappeared like mist. Just mist.”_

_The hunter shook his head, breaking into a nervous sweat. “I...I didn’t see anything. You were just pointing to the air and slashing.”_

_Dimitri did not respond to this; he simply chuckled and shook his head with the grievances plain upon his face. Blood stained his teeth and ran down his lips from an obscenely crooked bulge in his nose. His eyes rolled back and he kept hacking and lurching and shivering, and this was what Felix feared the most: Dimitri having to experience death._

_Before he had taken oath under the Hunter’s Dream, the former Executioner fought every battle for his life. Nothing like the hunters who dreamed and swore to keep dreaming until the end, privileged and cursed by the Hunter’s Dream reviving them each time they woke from a terrible nightmare. A privilege, for death was not their ruler and merely halted their process for a definite time; a curse for every death chipped away at the hunter’s own mind until some are left hollow, broken, and mad shells that had to be put out of misery—Felix had seen it before. Death took even when it didn’t totally consume, piece by damn piece._

_Seeing Dimitri choke and quiver before him, the young hunter feared—not for Dimitri who would die and wake up at a time in the Hunter’s Dream, but for himself._

_Felix always wondered if he could ever watch someone die, and while this answer had been found a dozen times with the deaths of mad Yharnamites expiring slowly against their ruined homes, all strength left him the moment he saw flickering flame behind Dimitri’s eyes—threatening to be extinguished._

_Felix had decided. He would not take watching this one die, even if Dimitri was a fool._

“ _Do you have any blood vials left?” The hunter hissed to his weakened partner._

“ _N-No. I think I used them all up,” Dimitri managed to stutter with a hint of sheepishness spilling out his pained voice. He even tried to smile but ended up coughing violently, blood splattering down Felix’s clothes in violent red blooms._

_Without a second thought, Felix reared back and pulled up his sleeve, slicing through the pale flesh of his arm with a dagger; blood slowly spilled out and coated his entire arm in black, skin throbbing with the exposure to air. He winced at the pain, but ignored it as he crept up to Dimitri._

_The other hunter looked sleepy but it was neither peaceful or drifting—a sleep that would steal away the last of his life so physically from this space that it was though his very soul had swept away from the body. Dimitri’s abdomen wound was still gushing and bleeding, his skin growing colder by the second. He stared at Felix and gave a crooked, dream-like smile._

“ _Hello, Felix. Has anyone ever told you that you’re very pretty?”_

_On cue, the hunter clamoured into Dimitri’s lap, and forced his bleeding arm into the boy’s mouth. Dimitri’s milky eyes cleared bright blue with recognition and he struggled under the new weight pressed against him and the strong arm jammed between his teeth._

“ _Stop. Drink,” Felix grunted, planting a hand at the back of his partner’s head—fingers gripping the hair tightly and forcing the boy still. And very briefly, Dimitri kept moving and groaning audibly, even turning his head in denial—until he stopped._

_For a moment, no one moved. Both boys had stayed very still; complete pitch darkness settled in outside of their grove with no sight of the mob or their dogs. Only the howling wind and the shaking trees asserting their witness to the bloody tryst._

_Finally, Felix felt a tingling, warm sensation in his arm. Dimitri had begun to drink—feverishly, like a starving infant. His long eyelashes fluttered briefly before closing and he reluctantly brought his strong hands up and held Felix’s sides for support. The dying hunter was sucking desperately, sloppily, with liquid dripping down his mouth in trails._

_A hot, slobbering tongue lavished Felix’s bleeding wound and the hunter sucked his teeth harshly. Yet he could not bear to tear his eyes away from the sight. Dimitri, the golden-haired, blue-eyed prince of a precious storybook sucking so eagerly on Felix’s arm—sharp canines digging into the skin, and a wandering, thirsty tongue lapping up everything like sweet milk. In the most twisted way possible, Felix’s strongest reaction was a crawling redness at his cheeks and faint heat swirling down in the pit of his guts._

_Finally, finally, Dimitri pulled away with a gasp— his saliva trailing from Felix’s arm like a web, and he laid back against the rock with a tranquil, far-off expression. His face was flushed over, pink and sweaty like an active fever, black blood smeared across his thin lips like he had devoured death itself._

_Felix clutched his arm, wet with drool and blood, and collapsed next to Dimitri. Drinking from the source was dangerous, his superiors had drilled into him time and time again, and in his delirium, his partner had taken much from his body; Felix was already feeling the painful emptiness that came afterwards. It was hollowing, his wound beginning to throb and sting coldly, but still he refused to succumb, clinging to consciousness with a vice grip as his gaze never left Dimitri._

_And prayed, praying to every God and Great One he didn’t believe in, that it would be enough._

_Slowly, the pale hunter blinked himself into life, the shimmering blue returning to part away the mist._

_He wiped his face clean. Felix sighed wearily, and let his eyes slip shut; after a moment, Dimitri’s head lulled against Felix’s shoulder and they sat very still, taking in each other’s haggard, irregular breaths._

_Finally, finally, finally, Dimitri said, “You’re a vileblood.”_

_Felix laughed shortly. “You’ve tasted our blood before?”_

“ _Executioners recognize blood dregs—the ones you kill our people for in order to sate your queen.”_

_It was no secret in recent history that the nobles of Cainhurst Castle preyed upon church hunters and took in their blood for strength. Their queen was the first vileblood when she accepted forbidden blood from a Byrgenwerth scholar and became immortal. Afterwards, the entire court wanted to ascend with their bloody ruler and set off to seek church hunters for their blood, their bastardized sport that ended up starting a war. Felix, too, grew up drinking the blood of Yharnamite hunters, though children were an ignorant lot and knew no better._

_Felix could not help but smile, relieved that a secret he had been hiding so long was finally out in the open, even if it meant dying to Dimitri’s hand._

_He laid his head against the boy’s and sighed through his nose._ “ _Well...what are you going to do now?” He asked softly. “Will you take vengeance for your masters?”_

_For a long, dark moment, Dimitri only breathed. Felix felt every single one, pressed against him like this. They were wet, dull, whistled through his undoubtedly broken nose._

_Felix counted every one like a child does sheep in slumber._

“... _My master is the hunt. And besides.” A strong hand searched and latched onto Felix’s fingers tightly, squeezing. He craned his neck, as met the specter of a smile upon Dimitri’s dear face. “Does our upbringing really matter if we are brothers of the Workshop?”_

_Felix’s heart was pumping quickly with a crazed, heightened speed—lightning coursing through his skin. His tired face involuntarily stretched into a wide smile and a stranger’s ghastly laugh croaked out from within._

“ _No...I suppose, not.”_

“ _Felix.”_

“ _Hm?”_

“ _Your blood...it’s...not bad. I think I like it.”_

“ _Yeah, well,” He sniffed dryly. “That’s the only taste you’re getting. Fool.”_

_Dimitri laughed heartily. “Consider me addicted.”_

_Felix had to bury his face into the palm of his hand to bury the collapse of all composure on his cool face. From deep within, his heart skipped beats and jumped upward with life—an unknown feeling emerging, foreign to both the ravished city of Yharnam or the forlorn castle Cainhurst._

_It felt warm, almost like honey. Sweet, sweet honey._

* * *

Sweet silver maiden of the moonlight.

The one who sleeps among dead gods- half eaten and left to rot.

She sleeps, surrounded by their corpses, the blankets of warmth.

Dreaming once again of flower fields and a boy in white.

And he dreams of her back, running forward and reaching out desperately.

Won’t she reach back?

* * *

**Central Yharnam – The Old Clinic**

Dedue was expecting him.

When Felix reluctantly staggered up those long steps and down the dim, chilled hallway, he was neither surprised or aggravated to see the apothecary standing near the windows. Dedue’s strong back was turned, tending to a few flowers glowing in the gentle moonlight. However, Felix was certain he knew he was there, the anticipation of a visitor plain in the atmosphere of the room.

The hunter stood right where the hallway split into the two wings of the clinic, and waited silently. He watched as Dedue poured some water into the pots and sprinkled something glowing and white on top of the soil; the plants quivered excitedly and uncurled once the particles disappeared beneath the dirt, seeping down to their roots. It was a methodical practice, one that made Felix wonder how the apothecary was able to raise all these plants in the middle of a bloody plague.

Eventually- long after Felix’s leg had begun to shiver sleepily- the apothecary finally stood up, the shadows and light of the latticed windows dancing along the deep cuts of his muscular back. He did not turn around, merely looking off down one of the wings, and asked very politely, “Would you like some tea?”

Felix merely nodded and followed the apothecary down the wing. There was a door at the very end, opening to a small and intimate study. A stony fireplace crackled along the back wall, a boiling cauldron of water resting atop the glowing flames that lit up the room softly, a low round table and a few mismatched chairs huddling together close by, as if they too sought warmth from the night’s cold. More bookshelves in the far back and another, larger table underneath the windowsill bearing jars of crystal sugar and dried leaves and herbs. The space was warm and soothing, almost as comforting as the Workshop of the Hunter’s Dream.

Dedue gestured kindly to the seat nearest the fire and went off towards the table with all the herbs. Felix never liked to make it seem that he was going to stay for too long, even back at the Hunter’s dream; he always hung around the doorway, arms crossed passively, and perhaps, leaned against the wall, preformative for short conversation before slinking off. The only person he sat down and relaxed with often was Dimitri, and that was because the foolish hunter liked to take breaks. _Snack breaks_ , especially.

These days, Felix did not have the time to sit or sleep out of his own will. When he collapsed against the wooden chair by the fireplace, his limbs became gelatinous, and the weary hunter practically melted into his seat. How long had it been since he rested his earthly body, out of the protectiveness of the Dream?

Not since Dimitri disappeared.

But despite it all, Felix was comforted, lingering here. Everything felt lucid, the soft crackling of the fire and the clinking of servingware behind him, sensations floating up into the wispy midnight clouds and drifting along gently- starting to doze, it took Felix a moment to notice the steaming cup of tea placed before him on the table.

Dedue came around and sat down on the other side, settling his large frame in and blowing on his own cup. The faint smell of spices filled the small room.

“I don’t recognize these leaves—are they from your homeland?” Felix asked, dazedly seizing the cup and sipping on the honey-colored drink before him. It was both tantalizing with a spicy zest and oddly gentle—a pleasant feeling which he hardly got from Yharnam’s dull teas or even the floral mixtures back in Cainhurst.

“Yes—I had to bring the seeds here and grow them myself. But this city’s… lack of sun has taken me to rely on the moonlight. So I’m afraid the herbs are not as potent,” Dedue said with a short nod. He drifted off momentarily, as if a flash of a memory came upon him, but blinked rapidly and sat back. “If you would like more, let me know.”

“I’ll only need the one—not planning on staying long anyway,” Felix grunted, downing another steaming gulp of tea.

The implication was clear. Dedue nodded and placed his cup down on the table. His silver eyes flickered upward and shone dimly in the flickering darkness like two distant stars. For some reason, Felix felt undaunted, enough to stare back dead on without a chill.

“You let me go into the Forbidden Woods, knowing that the caves were poisonous,” The hunter declared without a shred of resentment.

“You said you didn’t need my help.” Dedue pointed out, tone even.

“Fair. But I’m here now, aren’t I? You wanted to talk, so please,” The hunter gestured to the warm, spice-scented air between them. “Go ahead. What is it that you wanted to discuss?”

“Why are you asking, Felix? We both know who it is about.”

“You’re going to tell me that he’s gone mad too—like what everyone else is saying. That I must put him out of his misery. I know. I heard. And I don’t need to hear it again!”

“No,” Dedue shook his head, a faint flash of panic streaking across his cool gaze. “That’s far from what I wanted to say. Absolutely out of the question. I actually wanted to ask you to spare him.”

“Spare him?” Felix nearly choked on his tea. He shook his head frantically and clutched at his burning neck. “You’re kidding me, right? What if he’s actually mad? Wouldn’t it make sense if I put him out of his misery for good? By the Great Ones, it’s my fucking job, I’m not going to simply spare him because he was my former partner—“

“Will you? Once you find him, are you planning on actually killing him?” Dedue asked suddenly, lurching up from his seat.

Felix fell quiet. He sat very still in the firelight, staring down at his half-drunk cup of tea.

The apothecary sat down with a nod. “Of course not. I know you won’t. In fact, I was betting on your hesitation.”

“You don’t know me.”

“No, I don’t. But I hear the way Dimitri talks about you. I see the way his face lights up and glows. And I see that you have returned after dying painfully in the caves. I don’t need to know you—this is proof enough.”

“If Dimitri actually did lose his mind and fall to the blood, there’s nothing I can do to help him,” The hunter said in a hush, clutching the sides of his chair until the old wood splintered slightly into his gloves.

“And yet, you were hoping to go see him anyway. I’m not sure what your plan is, but allow me to provide you with some relief.”

“What, are you going to give me some antidote?”

“That and something more important,” Dedue said and reached inside his apron.

Something thin and wrapped intimately in a royal blue cloth appeared in his hand, and the apothecary gestured for Felix to accept it. It was heavier than what the hunter had been expecting and when he pulled the cloth away, his eyes grazed upon the cool steel of a knife. A silver dagger with an engraved sheath and a carefully ribbon-wrapped hilt.

“You...you want me to stab him? Isn’t this counter productive than what you actually want?”

Dedue made a small noise and it almost sounded like a laugh caught in his throat. He coughed into his fist and shook his head.

“No, no. This dagger is precious to Dimitri. If he does...fall from grace, please show it to him—I know he will remember himself.”

“Really? A dagger? What, is this his first weapon?”

“It belonged to Edelgard,” The apothecary explained simply.

 _Edelgard_. The name echoed in Felix’s head like a melody, sang into the watery concert of a well.

Felix nodded wordlessly for he understood the deep solemness of the dagger’s meaning, and slipped it securely into his weapon belt. It weighed against his hip in a burdensome way that reminded him constantly of his missing partner- and perhaps something more than just the absence of presence.

Felix lifted his eyes up and narrowed them quizzically at Dedue, frowning rather crookedly as to hide his growing jealousy.

“So...he told you about her too?”

The apothecary nodded. “She was his first friend. Even back when the Executioners were around, he always took the time to visit her at Mensis. Sometimes, she came to see him too. But that was a long time ago...and from what I last heard, she went missing—the whole school went silent, now that I think about it.”

“The School of Mensis...” Felix repeated pensively. “I know they worked with the Healing Church but Dimitri always made it sound like they were their own thing.”

“The School conducted...private research for the Healing Church, more than what the scholars or even those at Byrgenwerth can do. But other than that, I know nothing else—their secrecy and aloof nature is their curse for no one knows what has become of them.”

Dedue closed his eyes, the man’s stony face clenched tightly in heated concentration. After a moment, he exhaled harshly through his nose and crossed his arms.

“I apologize. I’m afraid that’s all I know.” Dedue stated, defeated.

“That’s fine—I didn’t expect anything from you. I hadn’t even heard of the School until Dimitri told me about them,” Felix reassured shortly. “I’m betting his disappearance had something to do with her. Another hunter mentioned that he seemed...occupied by thoughts of her lately.”

“It’s no surprise—Dimitri thinks of her as a sister. And in this land, family is terribly scarce.”

“You’re telling me. I would not be surprised if Yhanarmites ate their own children with how this hunt is going.”

Suddenly, the room lit up a thousand times in firefly-brief warmth as the apothecary smiled. It was a small smile, but the amusement was plain on his face and all that which was threateningly engraved on the man’s usual furrow washed away with the overwhelming sensation of brotherhood.

“You are also a stranger to this land, aren’t you, Felix? A survivor from Cainhurst,” He said pleasantly as though the implication was not painful enough.

“Probably the only survivor,” The hunter replied dryly. “So Dimitri told you that too?”

“Yes, but worry not—there was no scorn behind his words. I’m just relieved to know that I’m not the only outsider in these lands. It’s good to know that you’re here as well.”

Felix’s face blushed pink from the apothecary's honest words. He buried his mouth into his hand and groaned. “Please stop talking so foolishly.”

“I didn't mean to tease. It’s simply comforting, don’t you agree?”

“I suppose… but, why did you come to Yharnam?” Felix cut a curious gaze in his direction, lips turning down in a scowl even as his tone was half in humor. “This place is absolutely shit. I mean, for the past five years, it’s been shit so I don’t suppose I can complain about the descent in quality.”

“I had heard of the Old Blood,” Dedue started, still smiling though it seemed more dream-like and mirthless now. “Of its healing properties, that it could cure any ailment. My sister was sick with a sickness incurable in my country. So I made the long journey here in the hopes that I could retrieve this Old Blood and bring it back with me.”

The apothecary stopped and blinked, eyes clouded by a terrible, oppressive dream. “I suppose that it was only fortunate that I arrived so late to the city because it was already infected. To witness the after effects of this Old Blood, how it mutated and transformed the poor people of the city...it was chilling. The hunt had long begun and panic had settled in so violently—I remembered the people screaming and barricading themselves inside their houses as men took to the streets to kill the beasts that stalked them.” His voice dipped lower, though his gaze firmed, like steel beaten by a smith’s hammer. “But it was hard to tell the difference between man and monster—it seemed like if the Old Blood did not transform you physically, it destroyed you mentally. They all went mad—all wild and blood thirsty for anything that moved with sanity. And those who escaped from the slaughter stayed inside…”

For a moment, Dedue trailed off—paralyzed as if from a wandering thought. He stared outward, not truly at Felix but through him, somewhere detached and unchained from the small study they occupied. Finally, the giant man smiled ruefully and gestured to himself. “As you can see, I am...clearly not a Yharnamite. I’m not even from any place close to this city. No soul would dare help the outsider who needed a place to stay for the night, not that I can blame them. Fear breeds hatred and hysteria, but I was afraid too. I was afraid of dying in an unknown land, thousands of miles away from my home.”

“How did you survive then?” Felix interrupted, completely entranced by Dedue’s story.

He was not here when the initial chaos began, but Felix had shown up after to witness the aftermath of a tragedy—bodies strung up in the streets and wandering mad men with hounds in search of prey. However, to be caught up in the chaos itself, Felix could not imagine a worse welcoming.

Dedue’s smile warmed like a memory of an eternal spring. “A boy. The boy in robes of white and silver. He found me inside an overturned carriage on the bridge leading to the Cathedral Ward. At first, I thought he was one of them—the mad huntsman infected by the blood. But I saw the clean white of his robes, those big blue eyes untainted by infection. He offered me a hand and took him to his sanctuary in the Cathedral.”

“Dimitri.” Felix whispered the name like a prayer.

Dedue nodded slowly. “He took me in, fed me, sheltered me- introduced me to his kin. They...they were not welcoming of my kind. We both know now that the Executioners were plagued with their fanaticism, but even they seemed to soften when Dimitri pleaded with them.” He stopped, eyebrows furrowed. “I think...I think they saw him as a younger brother in many ways. For when the Executioners were finally called to attack Cainhurst Castle, they forbade him to go. I stayed with him, the entire time they were gone...and long after we learned why they never came back.”

Felix picked at the edge of his teacup, simmering in his thoughts. “... Did you know that he joined the Workshop afterwards?”

“But of course. It was around the time that I made a peculiar friend from the Forbidden Woods—we had begun to construct an antidote formula for my dear sister’s illness from the strange foliage in that area. Dimitri sought me after, to confess that he found a new family to stay with—a new cause to fight for…” Dedue’s moon eyes shone mischievously and he smiled at Felix, whose enrapt gaze never left him. “Someone special he wanted to stay close to.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him.” Felix uttered with a blushing scowl. He knew very well of the boy described so affectionately by the apothecary—that foolish, stupid, forgiving boy. That golden prince, who donned a black coat and became a lion. “He has no business befriending outsiders like us, especially in a world of killers and beasts.”

“Absolutely not,” Dedue agreed pleasantly. “Of course, may I ask—why did you come to Yharnam? Dimitri said that you were already here long before the attack on Cainhurst Castle.”

Felix breathed a soft huff through his nose and sat back. A clear and formless anguish washed over him, tinged by a dark drip of mania, a sick undercurrent that pulled at him every time he thought of that forsaken castle across the sea, with its icy-eyed nobles and their rich, tainted blood. And he remembered him, the buoy amidst the swell- the older brother with gray eyes like a hurricane and a smile sad as grief—the best knight of Cainhurst.

“You know, the Workshop only chooses foreigners to be the hunter of hunters,” He started coolly, placing his cup of tea down as if it stung him in some way. “The first hunters of the workshop saw my blade—the Chikage, a marker of the Cainhurst knights, and they trained me to take up the mantle. They did not ask me why I left Cainhurst or why I even decided to venture to this ruined city. Only saw that I had the skills of a killer and was an outsider. That’s all they needed."

Felix had prided himself on remembering. No matter how many times he died, he remembered. He remembered _everything_.

But everything didn't seem so important anymore.

“To be honest with you, I have died and dreamed so many times that I had long forgotten why I left Cainhurst...why I left my family. I think...I think maybe I was sick of all the ravening nobles there. I was sick of how they tortured and killed people for blood. I was sick of that entire court and its immortal queen. Or maybe...it was because my brother sensed something was wrong, and he wanted me gone before disaster fell on Cainhurst.”

Dedue frowned, the flames of the fireplace filling the lines of sadness cut in his face with shadow. “Is he—”

“Dead. That’s all you need to know,” Felix said in a firm tone that ended all discussion on the matter. He stared back at the apothecary with eyes beckoning for an end, a pain flushed clearly behind the amber orbs of the crow-feathered hunter.

Dedue showed him mercy and said no more. Instead, he pulled out a small, wrapped satchel from his breast pocket and placed it down in the middle of the table. The imprints from the wrapping were tiny, little beads—pills as it would seem.

“Antidote,” Dedue said kindly. “Stronger than what you hunters use, made by my own hands. It will help repel the toxic waters of the caves...and resist the poison of the creatures that stalk the forbidden woods above.”

Felix sighed and accepted the satchel graciously. “Thank you—I’ll need plenty of it if I should try to find this accursed college in the woods,”

“Listen,” The apothecary stood up and walked back over to the tea table by the window. His back had suddenly seemed much smaller, weaker even—a dot in an endless distance. “When you find Dimitri and...if he did lose himself, I trust in your judgment for what you ultimately decide.”

“Even if he needs to die?”

“Well, that’s up to you now, isn’t it?”

A small box wrapped carefully in a patterned cloth was thrown to the black hunter and he quickly caught it. It filled his hands warmly like the soft, ashy smoldering embers of a fire and smelled faintly of cooked meat.

“If you should meet a silver-haired gunner in the woods,” Dedue instructed carefully from afar, eyes radiating like the moon. “Leave him that and tell him that I thank him for the new flower samples. Now, good hunter, go. I wish you luck on your search and that you may see him once again.”

Felix stood up from his seat and performed a kneeling, sweeping bow—a gesture common for the nobles of Cainhurst castle: deep respect.

“You have my thanks...Dedue.”

* * *

**The Forbidden Woods**

‘ _To that hellish, fiendish place beyond Yharnam’s gates—do not venture there. Stay here for our beasts and madmen are simply bloodthirsty beings; the creatures there, however, tread the path of true evil.’_

The Forbidden Woods began their sprawl on the opposite side of a river, shadowed in pitch with the exception of a few wandering torches, leaves ink-black, humid air a solid, oppressive force that washed over the trees like a flood. Grim mist covered the entire area in a heavy, choking cloak until the naked eye could only see an inch ahead—as thick and suffocating as a veil of smoke.

Above, torrents of rain poured down in an unceasing deluge upon the black forest, the sky flashing every few moments as lighting brought its wrath down upon the wicked earth- illuminating stalking figures among the hilltops briefly.

Felix strapped his red lamp to his hip and threw his coat over the light protectively; the hunter stared out towards the bitterly dark forest and the thin rocky path that stretched out into nothingness. While he was warned of the dark evils that occupied the woods so intimately, he was more attentive to the sudden harsh weather that washed over the land in threatening waves.

Felix had already encountered beast men earlier on and liberated their snarling heads with his blade; there were mad huntsmen, their hounds, and traps littered all over the forest floor, which swung with bloody logs and grounds spikes. But these were common foes Felix had no problem dispatching.

He knew with canny certainty they were just the beginning. What the hunter sought laid in the heart of this darkness; it would not relinquish itself easily.

It would not be hospitable.

But there was nothing to be accomplished by standing there, dreading it. Felix grasped tight to his beloved sword, and stepped into the churning river.

The rushing waters bubbled with mud and bile, strange lumps floating downwards as the rain violently splattered upon the banks. Lightning continued to furrow the black sky and pieces of the highland—steep hills and dark cliffs collapsing headlong into the forest below in a suicidal tumble.

Felix waded his way to the other side, and crossed into the wood proper.

For a while, he simply walked, shoving foliage out of the way and cursing every time his boot slipped on a wet rock. He killed what he came across, ran when he could not. Time distorted among the trees, lost in the rain, the thunder, the thump of bodies into the mud once Chikage released them.

Some way into the forest were signs of a village once nestled in the darkness- half burnt houses, giant connecting farm buildings, even bridges scattered around the area. It was all bereft, of course, stripped by weather and time and looting.

Felix wound his way through the grave of civilization, watching the tree line cautiously when a figure caught his eye.

Only its silhouette could be discerned, dragging through the wet darkness as Felix passed over another creek, but the glimpse of it alone was enough to stop him dead.

The figure seemed human enough with arms swinging outward as it moved sluggishly through the thick of mud and rainwater. But its uncanny posture distorted the familiar image of a man and made twisted Felix’s own feelings of familiarity; the figure’s neck and head slinked upward and around itself- twitching violently, and something spilled out of its mouth like spraying vomit.

Felix’s eyes could not leave the sight before him. In his five years of hunting he had never encountered such a thing before, and the hissing, gurgled sounds it was making was enough to keep him pinned to place, hunched on the ground.

When it finally stumbled around and turned to look in Felix’s direction, the hunter had already quickly fled to the descending forest.

He managed to find sanctuary inside an ancient windmill trapped within the trees, rusted and beaten as the rest of the buildings, but intact, and Felix stepped inside to dry himself. The interior was cavernous, wood shavings shivering down from the old rafters like dry rain, and outside the external storm thundered on against the roof, creating a strange steel harmony of ghastly echoes and wet creaking inside the open space.

Deeper in, the hunter’s nose was assaulted violently with the powerful stench of putrid flesh. He turned to look upon a pile of cloth-bound bodies, rotting so wetly that the fabric that fastened them together had molded over black. While remains were a common sight, especially during the hunt, this pile melted into itself with age and water, rank, festering, vile; Felix covered his mouth and peered around the dim darkness of the windmill.

There were signs that this mill was in use back when the village, wherever it was, was operational: straps still hung from the nails studded to the walls, barrels of rotting fruit and wheat shoved in corners, pitchforks stabbed into hay and other farming equipment scattered about. Here, he understood quite keenly that there was once an actual, prosperous village located in these woods.

If Felix could find the village, perhaps he then could find Byrgenwerth College.

Of course, such a task was no easy feat. It was here the poor, exhausted hunter soaked from the head down, with miles and miles of malevolent black forest behind him, that Felix finally had a sense of how massive the Forbidden Woods was. In the dark, cool space of the windmill- this scrap of eden amidst the horrors stalking above and below and in mad, dizzying circles, he merely felt like a small speck, floating aimlessly in a vast, carnivorous ocean.

In truth, he had not the slimmest notion of where he was- for hours and hours he kept running and killing without an end in sight, without any indication if he was getting closer or further away from Byrgenwerth College or the village or anything else at all. His own vision was far too obscured with blood, rain, and mud, and everything felt freezing cold.

Finding a stack of lesser rotten crates, Felix sat down against one and placed his lamp down beside his feet. His back and legs ached terribly, right ankle throbbing slightly from a nasty slip earlier. The hunter pushed his wet bangs out from his face, eyes trailing up the aching steel ceiling.

If he could get to the village, he could possibly get a better grasp on where he was and where the college might be. Of course, Felix had little go off of- none of the other hunters save for Sylvain had ever stepped a foot in the Forbidden woods nor had they had a clue on the college’s whereabouts. Maps of the area were scarce, and with the Forbidden Wood’s penchant for consuming the unwary, there was doubt of the ones that did exist’s validity as well.

But there was a first time for everything.

On the other side of the windmill was an open door, oddly lit by the presence of torches on both ends. Heaving his protesting body up, Felix carefully made his way over, keeping close to the wall as he peered out. The rain had slowed to a very light sprinkle, enough for the hunter to see some distance out decently. Up ahead was a clear path leading across a stone bridge.

Limned by a pulse of lightning, Felix saw that standing atop of the bridge with his back turned was a huntsman. He was peering off towards the distance, holding a torch in one hand and a sickle in another. Felix sighed, relieved- nothing he couldn’t handle.

Slowly and with much care, the hunter crouched down and approached the unassuming huntsman from behind, Chikage already half-way out its sheath. The easiest kills were stabs to the back, enough to cripple them completely before the killing blow.

Rising up, Felix viciously stabbed his blade through the back of the huntsman, the creature gurgling and choking with the invasion of blood. With a swift kick against the body, the weapon lurched out with a mighty tug; blood misted into the rain and the huntsman collapsed weakly.

That should have been the end of it.

However, Felix stumbled back in surprise when his foe immediately rose, slack and loose-limbed but still _standing,_ as though pulled by a commanding string. The huntsman’s bleeding head began to throb violently like a live egg, threatening to crack; he staggered around, revealing a pained face pulsing and twitching, something in the brain seeking a desperate escape. Blood spilled out from the stretched, ripped mouth and the huntsman’s eyes bulged.

A scream, a burst of blood rain splattering Felix’s clothes, and then the horrifying reveal.

The hunter’s heart stopped in a frightful chill when he looked upon the sight of the staggering, possessed body sprouting the heads of ten serpents of myriad sizes, probing out from the neck like a livid infection. The largest head hissed at him, slick purple saliva dripping from its fangs and singeing through the bridge where it hit with an audible sting- poison, like down in the caves.

Everything Felix had come to learn and accept in the revolting city of Yharnam and the horrifying areas around it came to a crashing demise as he looked on in absolute horror and shock at a creature only described from the depths of darkness. A demon of fantasy come to life.

The snakes gave a strange shriek and the body lurched forward, the huntsman’s sickle brought up and slashing wildly. Felix stepped back at the last second and rushed forward, foreign blade shining in the wavering torchlight. He stabbed into the cluster’s base, the snakes screaming ferociously until one of the smaller heads reeled back and bit into the hunter’s shoulder.

Felix hissed as the hot scorching poison filled his blood and he shoved the snakes away, their body wheeling and jerking before plummeting over the side of the bridge to the forest floor below.

The hunter stayed very still, breathing harshly- panting, eyes roving and unfocused. The pain lanced through him, same as before- liquid, consumptive, flushing over all his limbs. Dedue’s antidote popped into his mouth quickly staunched the burn, and Felix forced himself to stumble over to the railing, watching as the snakes quivered and shrieked one last death knell before crumbling limp into the wet foliage.

Warmth flooded his eyes, and Felix reached up to touch, finding tears trailing down and joining the fresh blood on his gloves.

A hunter never cries. A hunter of hunters especially should be hardened by now, dulled to all sensations of pain- physical, spiritual, emotional. Felix never cried- hadn’t cried since Cainhurst, since boyhood- not even when he had to put down his first mad hunter. Somehow, this felt different, so raw and close to death even if he would only wake again in the Dream.

The child inside of the hunter wailed and Felix felt like laying down and curling up into a ball.

But he did not even have the time to conceptualize such a thing; from across the bridge came a collective of hissing and spitting, slithering wetly against the stone. A garland of serpents, a crown of seven, greeted their fallen comrade in solemn silence, before lurching up and hissing wildly at Felix.

A flash of lighting caught the iridescent black of their eyes, and the very sky convulsed, rain shearing from the clouds anew in a roaring thrash of thunder. The hunter picked up his black sword and dashed down and around the bridge, hurling himself through the running creek overflowing with rainwater. The spitfires of the serpents sprayed out once again but it was drowned in the low rumbling of the returning storm, the heft of their pursuit a physical feeling in the very ground as they chased the fleeing hunter headlong down the creek.

Felix kept to the banks as the rain descended violently to the earth once again, pained ankle struggling against the slipping mud and grass, but he forced himself faster, kept his ears open to the surging crowd of serpents behind him, crashing and falling frantically into the waters as they gave chase. But the soundness of the hunter’s mind gave way to cleverness when the waterway began to turn upward to higher ground; he climbed up against the cliff sides, avoiding stepping directly in the suspiciously shallow creek’s path.

As Felix heaved himself up higher, he looked back to see a mad, rushing crowd- snakes twisted and curled up in each other so chaotically that he could no longer pinpoint which body belonged to which fanged monstrosity, a viper pit of teeth and scales. The glow of their eyes darkened intensely with the black hunter standing over the hilltop where the creek poured from, and they shrieked fiercely, poison spilling from their fangs.

Finally, the torrents of rain pouring down made themselves useful, and the creek roared violently with the rushing surge of water, a ferociously swift gush ejecting from the opening that caught the snakes halfway up the hill. The deluge rose and fell so powerfully that the snakes in the back who saw the roaring rapids immediately spun around and attempted a desperate, clamoring escape, only to be washed away seconds later.

Those who clung to the side, grappling to the low, bent trees, slipped and fell into the overwhelming stream, their heads gulping up muddy water and disappearing in the surface below.

After a minute, only one snake huntsman remained- smart enough to move to the side and onto the ledge before the creek broke with rainwater. Felix barely spotted him in the darkness, attempting to scramble away but was torn down wickedly to his back when a strong hand seized his weak leg roughly.

He sunk into the mud, sheared at by rock and wood and bone, sore ankle caught in a clawed vice grip. Dazed and bleeding, the hunter looked up to see the hissing huntsman crawling before him with the ten heads of hydras, jaws unhinged, countless rivets of curved gray teeth drawing wide in smiles of demonic wickedness. Their throats, black and constricting and endless.

Chikage had landed a few feet away, too far for Felix’s hand, and he could only watch desperately as all ten heads reared back before striking forward to kill him.

Except the death never came.

Something shot out from the darkness and struck the eye of the largest serpent in a fiery blaze and a spray of blood.

It screamed out as its siblings writhed and contorted, their hissing shearing over even the call of the storm. Suddenly, more fiery bolts flew out and pierced the heads of the other snakes, one by one, falling limp in the huntsman’s coat as the others wrenched wildly.

Felix watched in awe as the fire spread out across the cursed body, engulfing them into a bright blaze; the huntsman staggered and fell back into the violent rivers below- the charred body plummeting into the rapids with a hiss of steam.

He blinked composure back into his weary figure and finally stumbled up to retrieve his lost blade. Up above, somewhere up on the dark treetops, was a small wooden post, incredibly hard to see behind its camouflage of leaves and twigs, but Felix caught the sharp glint of a crossbow peeking out from under the leafcover.

After a silent, breathless moment, the leaves were parted slightly and a silver-haired hunter emerged. Like most hunters, he was draped in black though dirt and grime was intentionally wiped across his boyish face and soft hair to blend into the forest. Green eyes, bright with innocence blinked, against the darkness, scanning the river below before finding Felix.

The young hunter smiled simply and gave a small wave.

“Good hunter, are you alright?” He called out in a light voice.

Felix huffed harshly against the tree trunk and nodded weakly.

“Come up my friend! It is safer here!” A rustling noise preceded the spiraling of rope tossed down to the forest floor, landing by Felix’s feet. “Climb up, there’s enough room for two—three even!”

Without a second thought, the exhausted hunter pulled himself quickly up against the tree until the young hunter helped him into the wooden post. He collapsed weakly against the dry wood, never so relieved to be indoors in his entire life, and the young hunter pulled the leafy flaps down, tucking them away until the post was hidden once more in the cover of the forest.

Upon closer inspection, Felix realized that his rescuer was a young man, no older or taller than him. He had gray, smokey hair and gentle green eyes, which smiled so naturally and exuded kindness effortlessly. A silver crossbow was laying near his legs along with a flint and several steel bolts.

Felix blinked weary and coughed up water onto the boards; the young hunter drew near and patted his back.

“There, there, you’re alright now,” He murmured reassuringly. “Bad time to be caught up in a storm- in this place of all places.”

“Y-You’re telling me,” Felix huffed wetly and heaved until his chest stung. “What the fuck were those things?”

“I like to call them snake parasites since...you know!” He gestured to his head, a self-amused smirk on his lips. “Sometimes the snakes are just out in the open, crawling around in these huge balls on the ground...”

Felix paled at the thought. “By the Great Ones…”

“That’s not all you have to worry about. Near the college gate are these huge walking mosquitoes that can suck all the blood from your body. One bite from them can make you go crazy.”

Felix’s darkened eyes suddenly flickered with life and he shot up. “T-The college? You mean the college of Byrgenwerth?”

The young hunter frowned, uneasy. “Y-Yes? Is that why you’re here?”

“I-I need to find the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth! Do you know what that is?”

“No, I don’t know of it. I’ve never stepped foot in the college- I only guard the Forbidden Woods.”

“I need to-” Felix cut off with a yelp, his sore ankle finally giving out on him. He slipped and crashed back down against the wooden boards like a wounded dog.

The young hunter immediately dove in and helped him sit up against the trunk. There was a glaze cast across his green eyes, pent with worry.

“You’re in no condition to be running around! Please, take rest here, at least until you get your energy back,” The young hunter instructed worriedly. He rifled through a small container until a blood vial was uncovered, and held it out, gesturing for Felix to take it with a small smile. “Here- I have plenty!”

“You’re a strange thing, aren’t you?” Felix coughed-laughed, accepting the gift graciously and downing it immediately. The pain in the joint started to ebb away, and relief washed over him like a cooling mist.

The other hunter chuckled and pressed a hand to his chest. “The name is Ashe.”

Felix set aside the vial and wiped his mouth. “Felix.”

Ashe’s clover eyes lit up immensely and he lurched forward excitedly. “Wait, you’re from the Workshop, right?! The Vileblood Wolf!”

“Uh,” Felix edged back nervously. “You heard of me?”

“Of course I have!” Ashe chuckled and sat down, suddenly sheepish and demure. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to come off so intense. Since the Healing Church fell, only the Workshop’s been active in the hunt so I tend to keep track. Everything I’ve heard about you is incredible. You’re untouchable with a blade!”

“You’re a good shot yourself- why are you hiding out here instead of hunting in Yharnam? We could use a gunner like you.”

“Oh, I would! Believe me, I thought about it. But I think I do a better job here scouting the Forbidden Forest.”

“There’s...no one left here, though,” Felix stated bluntly.

“I know, I know! I just used to live in the village here so it kinda feels like my obligation to watch over it, even if everyone is dead,” The pale-haired hunter smiled sadly and looked down at his gloved hands.

Felix wanted to say more but his head was ringing like an accursed bell and he reclined back against the tree, shuddering and unsteady. Noticing his shivering, Ashe carefully brought a blanket over and draped over him with the diligence of a mother. He smiled softly and brought his crossbow up to his chest.

“Why don’t you rest, Felix? I promise I’ll keep guard until you wake up. And don’t worry. Nothing can reach us up here.”

“Ashe…”

The pale-haired hunter smiled again and said nothing more; he turned around and lifted one of the flaps of the post. Looking down and out, he slipped through and disappeared into the trees.

Felix watched his gray figure fade into weakness and then out of his consciousness altogether, the cold and rain falling away as he plummeted deadweight into a dream.

* * *

🌕 _**Full Moon**_ 🌕

_It was Sylvain who found the bottle of wine._

_He discovered it while clearing out some of the medical buildings around upper Yharnam, tucked away in a drawer, probably some poor dead fool’s nightcap._

_It was neither a pungent blood cocktail or even a light mixture, but a completely unopened, preserved bottle of red wine made from the fermented black grapes grown in the temperate winters of Cainhurst. Before the beast scourge, Yharnamites used to enjoy an evening drink, and a Cainhurst red was the finest around, especially considering how relations between the two were not always so torn and volatile._

_Felix did his best to restrain his excitement when the other hunter revealed the bottle to the group when they gathered around in the flower gardens of the Hunter’s Dream._

_The silver curved font and the familiar imprint of black grapes against a snowy castle backdrop caused his heart to race with nostalgia; soft memories of him and Glenn drinking in the candlelight of the grand hall- and the cluttered attic as well, in the years before they were allowed their own goblets._

_Instead, the young hunter kept quiet with a small smile as Ingrid and Dimitri peered over in absolute awe. Sylvain chuckled and wiped his nose with the arrogance of a senior hunter._

“ _It’s a good find, right? Hell, with the hunt these days, this is practically a relic!” He declared boldly._

“ _I can’t believe it’s a whole bottle. My parents used to sit together and drink by the fireplace, when we could afford it,” Ingrid said excited and leaned back against the tree trunk. “I think you have my father’s favorite brand.”_

“ _Cainhurst brand, one and only! Felix, you must remember this, huh?”_

_The vileblood hunter smirked knowingly. “The court used to get madly drunk to this stuff—especially my brother. Of course, that was before the whole blood craze.”_

“ _Ah yes, the blood craze! It’s practically the trend nowadays- quite fashionable, drinking some poor bastard’s innards.” Sylvain nodded blithely with a laugh.“You know, the League never cared about all that blood transfusion- we always had wine! My brother used to stockpile this stuff whenever he made trips to Yharnam, and then the bunch of us would sit around after a long day and drink until the moon disappeared.”_

_Sylvain peered over to Dimitri and nudged the boy’s leg playfully. “What about you, lion cub? Have you ever touched this stuff?”_

_The blue-eyed hunter’s cheeks tinted pink and he shook his head, sheepish. “The Executioners told me I was too young to drink. And besides, we only drank during mass or religious ceremonies.”_

“ _Figures! So you’re a virgin then?”_

“ _Please don’t say it like that...but yes, physically speaking, I have never touched any alcohol other than a molotov cocktail.”_

“ _You hear that kids? We have ourselves some fresh blood,” Sylvain chuckled, eyeing Ingrid and Felix with a mischievous flash in his brown eyes._

_He turned towards the Workshop and snapped his fingers sharply; suddenly, a light shone in the space they all sat around and a cluster of messengers emerged. They peered all around, eying the young hunters curiously before settling on Sylvain, who smirked, something clearly in-mind._

“ _You guys got any wine glasses around—clean ones, to be exact?”_

_It only took a second for a few of the messengers to slip down and back up with a round of dark wine glasses in their helpful grasp. Sylvain accepted them graciously, even patting their heads in approval before handing everything out to the group._

_Felix peered idly at his drawn-out reflection in the black-green glass’s sheen and Ingrid giggled softly. As Sylvain began hunting around for something to uncork the bottle with, Dimitri stared at his own glass with the perplexity of a child gazing into a complex machine. He could not seem to hold it properly, at least with a comfortable grip; the boy clenched it with both of his hands and kept it away from his face nervously._

“ _Alright! Everyone better back up unless they want to wake up by the Workshop again,” Sylvain warned as he brought his knife out and stabbed it into the cork. The three hunters scooted back as the older boy dug in and pulled down. The cork popped out and flew overhead as bits of red wine sprayed onto the flowers._

_Some got onto Felix’s cheek and he gave a rare laugh—a sound he himself had not heard since Cainhurst. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dimitri’s gaze stuck to him in awe._

_Tossing the knife and its still-impaled cork over his shoulder, Sylvain poured the rich red-black wine into their glasses modestly before filling his own to the very top._

“ _Well, here we are,” He said, swirling his glass around. “Just four strangers in a world that wants us dead, trapped in a dreamland that won’t let us die. I suppose if we should celebrate something, we should celebrate our mismatch of a family.”_

“ _Mismatch? Oh, stop exaggerating,” Ingrid said and wiped the drool from her mouth from staring at the wine for so long._

“ _Think about it—you’re from the Healing Church, I was with the League, Felix came all the way from Cainhurst, and Dimitri’s former group wore white and funny metal cones on their heads.”_

“ _It wasn’t funny-”_

“ _See? One misfit of a family if I ever saw one.” Sylvain raised his glass. “Come now, let us toast to this brotherhood for it's probably the only we will ever have this ruined world.”_

_Ingrid sighed and brought her glass up to meet his. “To us, I suppose.”_

“ _We usually only hold up chalices to the church, but this is just another form of worship than anything else.” Dimitri smiled softly and lifted his glass with the others. “To us!”_

“ _Felix? You in?” Sylvain asked with a beckoning gaze._

_The vileblood hunter stared at the three before looking down at his wine. The liquid swirled richly with the faint aroma of winter fermented grapes, the same ones the castle servants used to stomp out in the courtyard. Abruptly, he thought back to Glenn’s celebratory dinner after his brother became the queen’s personal bodyguard. The wine never seemed to end, a sickly sweet taste that overwhelmed the young boy’s senses—like the ripe berries had been dipped in honey._

_Glenn had drunken himself into a dancing fool and dragged his brother out onto the courtyard to half-haphazardly waltz before collapsing into the snow. That night, the entire castle fell asleep, bottles of wines rolling over the marble floor; Felix remembered laying his head onto Glenn’s stomach and stared up at the stars as they swirled all around him in twinkling patterns. He had been eleven. Glenn, fifteen._

_Felix blinked himself into life and stared back at the three hunters as though he had awoken from a dream._

_The vileblood hunter coughed into his fist and brought his glass up to join them._ “ _To our family…”_

“ _To our family!”_

_The glasses clinked together and pulled away; Ingrid immediately downed her drink with the vigor of a dying man as Sylvain took a methodical sip and swished it around in his mouth, half-smiling from the taste. Felix dipped the glass over and took a gulp, feeling memories of the old country flood into his mouth and down his throat—it was pleasant, enough for him to smile openly in unabashed contentment._

_Dimitri, on the other hand, stared at his glass before bringing it up to his lips. The blue-eyed hunter sipped with a slurp and allowed the wine to sit in his mouth for a bit before swallowing. He perked up a bit and smiled pleasantly._

“ _I like the consistency.” He finally stated._

“ _Ah, a man who appreciates the consistency—very important for wine experts! These days, people only talk about the taste,” Sylvain remarked with a smirk._

“ _I love the candles all over the Hunter’s Dream,” Ingrid said, pointing out to the row of lights all around the realm and the garden with a bubbly giggle. “The flowers too! If it weren’t essentially purgatory, I would believe this to be the most romantic place on earth. Imagine having your first kiss here.”_

“ _What a terribly good idea, Ingrid! Let’s make some memories,” Sylvain declared and leaned forward, puckering his lips dramatically._

_The woman slapped her hand over his mouth and shoved him away, laughing rarely as she drank the rest of her wine down._

_That evening continued on in merriment—a never-ending night as time had no reign in the Hunter’s dream, but it was reprieve from the midnight streets and the endless slaughter all the same, a night in that it was respite before the accursed cobbles ran red again and the cycle resumed. They drank more and more, chatting about the world before the beasts: Ingrid, before the Healing Church, was a daughter to a family of tailors who ran a textile shop near the Clinic. Sylvain and his brother were, as he claimed, of a family of art and antique collectors. How they both ended up in the League was still a mystery, though the older boy teased that it had something to do with their father’s many debts._

_Felix felt loose enough to talk about Cainhurst—only a little bit, primarily about Glenn. How his brother was Cainhurst's most skilled knight and how quickly he rose up the ranks to be the Queen’s personal vanguard. Of his love of wine and winter and the fat spotted seals that sunned themselves on the rocky shores near the castle. The entire time he spoke, Dimitri’s eyes would not leave him. The intensity behind that blue had a hard edge to it, and Felix in his tipping state could not begin to decipher its meaning._

_He just kept talking, only for a little while before he fell back into his usual quiet._

_Everyone’s gaze pivoted to Dimitri next in expectation. It was his third glass of wine, but the boy showed no signs of intoxication or even being remotely inebriated. The only thing that seemed off was how the gentle smile on his face was gone, replaced with a weary frown. Dimitri did not usually talk much. In fact, out of the entire group, the boy was the most tight-lipped about his past._

_When he finally relented, the movement was minimal. The Executioners had taken care of him for as long as he could remember; there was a girl from the School of Mensis—Edelgard, who was his very first friend, and they visited each other often and were as close as siblings._

_Then that was all. Nothing of his parents. Nothing of where he lived or if he was even from Yharnam or Cathedral Ward, or if he’d simply fallen out of thin air and ah, there he was._

_Felix did not push him to say more. If Dimitri wanted to share, he would—no sense in pressuring the hunter. And yet, the intrigue from it all was eating away at him, and he wondered keenly on the things his partner went through in his young life._

_Eventually, the wine bottle emptied, and Sylvain grabbed Ingrid by the hand, insisting that the messengers knew how to play tiny violins and that they simply must find them and dance. Tugging her away to the Workshop amidst a fit of giggles, they left the garden, the sounds of their footsteps descending up and fading into the night._

_Illuminated by the cool, white moon hovering closely by, Felix and Dimitri laid down side by side in the flowers and stared up at the black ocean, stars bright pinpricks of light within the depths of eternity._

_The vileblood hunter’s head was swirling warmly with ambrosia, and he gave a low chuckle as he peered over to his partner. Dimitri was laying very close to him, enough to touch. His head had lulled over, facing Felix, pillowed upon his arm; eyes closed and long pale lashes fluttering softly against pink cheeks, red-stained lips parted slightly. The positioning of his arm had pulled up the bottom of his sweater, a plane of pale, flat stomach revealed from its dark blue depths._

_Felix would have believed he’d drifted off into a wine-pleasant slumber had it not been for his eyes suddenly opening to two dark slits, peering closely at him._

_The boys stared at each other, unmoving, taking in each other’s soft breaths—filled with the scent of bitter and sweet grapes. Finally, thin lips moved and formed a single word._

“ _Yahar'gul.”_

“ _What?” Felix muttered weakly._

_Dimitri closed his eyes again and swallowed. “Yahar'gul. That’s where I’m from.”_

“ _I don’t know where that is.”_

“ _No one does. Not in Yharnam. Not in Cathedral Ward. Not even in the Healing Church, except the Choir. And then the School of Mensis—that’s how I met Edelgard.”_

“ _How come no one has ever heard of it?”_

“ _It’s a hidden village—somewhere deep beneath and far.” He sighed quietly, his brows knitting tightly on his flushed face, as if the recollection pained him. “The school was experimenting on something down there. Every day, friends and family disappeared, one by one. And then, my father was called by the school for something important. He never came back. Edelgard came to me and said I was next. She smuggled me to Cathedral Ward where I met the Executioners.”_

“ _Dimitri…”_

“ _I don’t think...I don’t think anyone is left alive down there,” The boy choked into a half-sob. He covered his eyes and shuddered. “Edelgard told me that they’re still experimenting—they’re collecting people from the surface, trying to build God.”_

“ _Why?” Felix asked nervously. He was drunk, the words and their truths clinking meaninglessly around inside of his dim, slowed consciousness, but he still knew pain, could never forget pain- and he saw Dimitri’s pain, clear as the night upon his face._

“ _I don’t know,” Dimitri said in the quietest voice, barely a whisper. A weak, sad admission. “I don’t know. Edelgard is scared, but she doesn’t want to leave. Her family are members of the school. It’s her life.”_

“ _Why...why are you telling me this?”_

“ _Because,” The blue-eyed hunter turned until he was fully facing his partner. His face, while still intoxicated by the sweetness of the wine, was sharp, expression piercing as the ice of a Yharnam blizzard._

_Dimitri stared unwavering at Felix, and Felix stared back- words unable to leave his mouth as if he lost all speech._

_Finally, the hunter pushed himself up and leaned over the other boy. Felix did not move; he did not breath or speak. He only watched enrapt as Dimitri brought them closer, ever closer together—the keenness of those blue eyes leveled to the flickering amber of his own. The mingling of their joined breaths, warm with sweet nectar, filling the space between them with an aroma so intoxicating that neither could recognize anything but the other._

_Felix felt himself pushing his face forward as Dimitri closed the space between them; soft, drunken lips met in the middle—chaste, gentle, and incredibly light. Dimitri’s strong hand pressed into the grass beside Felix’s head as his other hand gently clasped over his partner’s trembling arm. Felix breathed into the other boy, all the tension and ache slipping away from his body, replaced with a fuzzy, saccharine feeling, almost as powerful as the wine itself._

_They stayed like that, kissing softly beneath the white of the grand moon and in a bed of pale flowers. In a place of childhood, a choice that took them beyond._

_Eventually, Dimitri pulled away to breathe, his face more flushed than ever with eyes lit up and swirling intensely with emotion._

_Felix wanted to laugh, but his cheeks stung harshly._

“ _Please tell me that it was you and not the wine,” Was all he said, playful hands wandering over to Dimitri’s shaky ones. Fingers latched onto each other and squeezed._

_His partner laughed sadly, a melody of mirth and black winter grapes. He leaned over and smiled as a worshiper to an exalted God, ever-loving and unconditional. Above them, the full white moon glowed enviously of young, blossoming life._

“ _Oh, Felix. I’m not even drunk.”_

* * *

The silver maiden made a sound.

A sound of waking.

And the whole world shivered with fright.

* * *

**The Forbidden Woods**

When Felix finally woke up, heavy but refreshed from the heady, much-needed slumber, Ashe greeted him with some pleasant news; one, that Felix could just keep to the treetops using the gunner’s secret network of paths and outposts, and it would lead him to the abandoned village at the heart of the woods. And second, that from the village, if Felix stuck to the main forest path, he would eventually reach the black gates of Byrgenwerth. Ashe was not exactly sure if the gates were locked as he patrolled near the area, but said it would not hurt to try.

Felix nodded, gracious for some development in his search. He sat up and stretched, feeling his sore muscles shift and release with considerably more willingness than before, when something heavy in his cloak thudded against his side.

Suddenly remembering, he pulled out the small wrapped box Dedue had handed to him before he left. The entire cloth was partially wet and crumpled from the rain but it was intact and still—strangely enough—warm.

The vileblood hunter did not know how exactly the package was able to survive the long hike or the slaughtering or even the disastrous fall, but he handed it over to Ashe with an appreciative nod. The gunner’s green eyes immediately lit up with recognition and he accepted the gift with a slight pink tint to his cheeks.

Felix couldn’t help but take note. _Huh,_ he thought, somewhat smuggly. It was like that.

After Ashe had stowed his present, the pair roused and peeked out to the forest. The dark was still bitterly oppressive, but the rain had stopped, and Felix, at least, was able to see a few feet out into the trees. Ashe pointed to him the planking he made from one tree to another and listed off several of the outposts sprawled across the forest—high enough to evade any staggering enemies from below, sheltered from view and swiping claws by the dense foliage. The route, despite zigzagging all around the treetops, would end right overhead at the village.

“Just follow the planks! Once you’re in the village, try sticking to the houses until you see the main clearing leading up the gates. It’s not hard to miss at all,” Ashe advised carefully with an easy grin. “The village is mostly a wreck now, but there should be enough standing shelter to provide cover if you need to wait and hide awhile.”

Felix nodded, recalling the other’s horrific detailing of the blood-sucking giants that supposedly awaited the gates- but then was struck by something else. “You never did tell me why you stuck around this accursed place outside of your...destroyed village. I mean, there is a sanctuary in the Cathedral Ward you can go to.” He pointed out.

“Oh I know—Dedue’s told me about the chapel. It’s hard to explain but I would really prefer to stay here—clear out any vermin that defile the village. It just feels like I belong here. I always belong here, you know?” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “A place can start to feel like a person, after a while, you know. But, it doesn’t even have to be a place. It could just be a person too. Someone you don’t mind being around despite everything, no matter what?” Ashe shook his head and sat back with his crossbow. “No. Either way, I don’t think I’m leaving anytime soon.”

“I...I understand,” Was all Felix could say hoarsely as his mind dwindled to soft thoughts of a mane of gold and eyes of ice. _It was like that._ He blinked rapidly and frowned grimly. “Are you sure you never heard of something called the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth?”

Ashe shrugged, pensive. “No, I’m sorry. I know of the college but other than that, I can’t help you.”

“I see…”

“All of the scholars either left or were killed during the scourge so the entire building is empty. Maybe they left it behind,” He offered kindly. “May I ask why you’re searching for the Wisdom? Not many come here unless they’re truly desperate.”

“I’m searching for someone...precious to me,” Felix uttered slowly with his eyes closed and fists clenched. “Last that I heard, he was searching for the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth.”

“If that’s the case, he must have crossed here at some point.”

“You didn’t see anyone, did you?”

Ashe shook his head. “Other than you? No, not at all. I only keep to the village and then whenever I need anything, I go visit Dedue at the clinic. It’s a large forest, and even I sometimes miss things. If anyone did come through, I must have.”

“Don’t worry about it. I just need to get to Byrgenwerth and I’ll try and think from there,” Felix said and peered outside. The woods were too deep, taller than the spires of Yharnam, cloaked in darkness and cloudcover and far too dim for him to see anything too long off, other than the sprawling gnarled body of the wood and the peaks of cliffs stabbing forlornly at an absent moon.

Ashe’s secret canopy route stretched far out into the darkness, but the hunter knew that staying above was the better option to staggering around down there, in the mire and mud with all those beasts. He turned back to the pale-haired gunner and nodded with a small smile. “Thank you again for everything. Really.”

Ashe smiled like the sun that never rose and clenched his hands together in determination. “I hope you find your friend!”

“Yeah...me too.”

\-----------

Exactly as Ashe had directed, his trail through the treetops did indeed lead to the heart of a ruined village in the middle of the Forbidden Woods.

The houses here were all burnt down and torn open, roofs caved in, shattered glass cutting a fanged pathway amid the wreckage, the stretch of rot filling the air. Wasted bodies of beast men, huntsmen, and those snake parasites scattered the area- charred to a crisp with silver bolts sticking out from their backs.

It seemed like the young hunter was ardent about preserving his former home, slaughtering any creature that wandered in.

Felix carefully peered around the village before climbing down from Ashe’s last outpost. The ground around him was still wet, the rocks of the paths slippery with death, and his ankle protested faintly at the thought. Still, the hunter carefully trenched ever forward, eyes glazing over the slumped bodies that littered the village center, meeting the frozen stare of a beast man with a bolt in its milky eye.

The hunter could not imagine the absolute slaughter which ruined this village. Laid out in even, painstaking rows were dozens of small graves, crowned by handmade headstones stabbed into the soil- probably made by Ashe himself for his friends and neighbors. Ashe, it’s only survivor, did not seem to want to let it go, going as far as to build a whole network in the trees just to keep guard of this place, a graveyard for no one but himself and the beastmen to mourn.

Felix almost felt like choking; his traitorous eyes threatened to be overwhelmed by heat again. It was not as though he had never seen graves before. Chained coffins were often left all over Yharnam’s streets, no one remaining to bury them. But, somehow, being here in the ruins of a life, he remembered terribly:

He remembered Cainhurst.

He remembered Dimitri’s own home, Yahar'gul.

And in thinking of places long gone, he wondered to himself if there was any point to finding Dimitri at all. It seemed this world was doomed regardless of how valiant the struggle, that it was simply fate for him to lose his hunter. What was the point in chasing after a phantom?

_It doesn’t even have to be a place. It could just be a person too. Someone you don’t mind being around despite everything, no matter what._

But Cainhurst did not matter anymore, neither did Yharnam or the Cathedral Ward or even the Workshop. None of it, not truly.

On his belt, Edelgard’s dagger hung in its silver sheath, sharp and wicked as a sliver of moon. Its weight both grounding and goading.

If Felix could find Dimitri, even if he was mad— he’d pull him back from the brink, tooth and nail, kicking and screaming. Felix knew how these things went, he knew the fate that awaited them all at the end of this dark night, but he would cut a bloody way through even if he had to make one.

And if Felix couldn’t… they would go mad together. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered.

Yes, Felix would find him. And he would never let him go.

As the hunter grew dangerously possessed in his thoughts, there was a cry. He snapped out of his dream and his eyes shot around the upper part of the village.

Up ahead at the forest path, there came a mighty roar- an explosion of fire suddenly erupted throughout the trees, leaves and branches rustling violently in the heat of the soaring flames. Felix dashed up and over, avoiding the torrents of loose fire as he heard the cry of a woman.

When Felix came up, his boots nearly slipping on the wet puddles, he stopped, shocked by the sight that greeted him.

A young woman with soft red hair was crawling through the mud in a panic, her hands gloved red by flames. And descending upon her was what Felix could only describe as evil incarnate—a gigantic, spilling pile of snakes twisting inward and outward of itself like guts webbing from a man’s torn stomach.

They hissed and spewed venom from their teeth at the woman.

“S-Stay away!” She shrieked frantically and blasted another ball of flames at the creature.

It reeled back, heads whipping around wildly. And for a split second, it seemed like it was going to slip away and retreat—but then the heads joined together as the flames danced around their bodies and shot out at the woman like a blazing sunbeam. She closed her eyes and brought her hands up desperately.

Felix dashed forward, his blade already halfway out his sheath, and he sliced through the jutting necks of the serpents. Blood spewed violently with a thin hiss and some of the heads limped dead against their brothers. The pile reeled back, curling and congealing in pain. In their short moment of blind despair, Felix stepped forward slashing viciously without stopping—he did not know where he was aiming, only that his arm moved automatically, with precision, with intent.

With every hack, red and purple spray marked the black sky as the hissing and shrieking heightened to cry like a child’s unhinged and absolute fear; the ferocious sobbing of a beast turned inward into desperation for the end.

When Felix finally ceased, the snakes were pulverized, coated bleak red like a cluster of intestines, and they slumped into the wet soil of their own waste and pooling blood.

Hot, white, burning rage was still ringing in his head like a broken church bell as the hunter panted heavily, the hand that held the sword shaking with fury. Everything stung with a fading sensation, his blood soared, his heart ached terribly against the constricting cage of his ribs; his own sight was blinded bright red so much so that he never noticed how the carnage before him began to move ever so slightly.

A pair of yellow eyes glowed out from the blood massacre, a low vengeful hiss, and then a head shot out from the corpses. Felix hardly noticed the lashing survivor until a ball of flame flew past his head and scorched the last serpent in a small explosion.

With a final hiss, it crumpled and withered to a pure black crisp—flesh smoldering against the fresh wet soil of the forest grounds. Felix stared in awe at the scorched creature, and turned around to the young red-haired woman. She staggered up onto her legs and wiped the muck away from her teary, red face. Her clothes were neither that of a hunter or a civilian but robed like an academic, in the way of a scholar. Despite this, it seemed like she had been running and fighting for a long time considering how torn and filthy the skirt of her light colored dress and cloak were.

The two stared at each other silently, trying to decipher one another like two completely foreign creatures, so captured by the oddity of their natures with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. Finally, the young woman’s button nose wiggled like a rabbit’s- a whiff of something unpleasant, and her face fell slightly.

“Phew! Something smells awful,” She groaned and waved her hand in the air.

Felix pulled his collar out, took a sniff, and then gestured knowingly to the burnt carnage behind him.

“I think it’s the snake barbecue.”

“Gosh, don’t say it like that! I feel like throwing up,” She bemoaned. There was a moment of reflection in her big bright eyes as she peered all up and down Felix with visible intrigue. A soft smile graced through the dirt on her face and she waltzed forward.

“You’re a hunter, aren’t you?”

“What gave it away? The clothing? The bits of flesh decorating my figure? The weapon?”

“All of the above—plus the way you absolutely slaughtered that creature! I must thank you sincerely, Mr. Hunter.”

Felix did a little bow, ignoring the dull pain throbbing at his back. “As to you for the explosive finale, madam…”

“Annette,” The woman introduced with a bubbly voice.

“Felix- I’m from the Workshop in Yharnam.”

“Yharnam?! By the Great Ones, why would you come all the way here? Unless you’re one to take such risky strolls through vermin infested woods.”

“I would rather be crawling through the sewers than here. No, I’m in search of Byrgenwerth College,”

Annette’s gaze went cold and still and she stepped back a bit. “Why?”

Felix immediately sensed the young woman’s apprehension, as if he had said something openly vulgar and allowed to seep into the air. “Because, I need to find something called the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth. A friend of mine has gone missing and last I heard, he was searching for this thing. Most likely, it’s at the college,” He explained quite honestly and gauged Annette for her reaction.

She did not move. “So you don’t know what the Wisdom is? Or even where Byrgenwerth is?”

“That would make my life a whole lot easier. I didn’t even know the college existed for a while. It’s all a legend to me.”

“What if you can’t find it? You know, they locked the place up for a reason.”

“I have to find it,” Felix said firmly, clenching at the empty air around them. He felt his throat burn from the rising tension and shook his head frantically. “There is no other choice here. Even if this place is in the fiery pits of damnation, I have to reach it.”

Annette’s gaze softened and she glanced off at the ground. “You sound pretty desperate. I mean, you came all the way here—that should say something.”

The young woman brushed the dirt off of her dress and turned to face the ascending path into the higher parts of the woods. There was a moment where she stood very still, swaying ever so slightly with an active, aching thought that ran up her body. Finally, she looked over her shoulder to Felix, gestured kindly and said, “Very well then—I’ll take you there.”

The hunter blinked. “Where?”

“To Byrgenwerth, silly! I’ll take you to see the famed Wisdom!”

“Wait, seriously?!” Felix almost shouted but kept his outburst to an excited noise of utter surprise. The surmise of relief was quite plain on his face and he made absolutely no attempt to hide the growing smile slipping across sweat and muck. “So, does this mean that you’re-”

“A scholar? You betcha! Though there are not many of us left. Come, I’ll escort you myself for it’s just up ahead.”

“By the Great Ones—finally,” Felix sighed loudly and wiped his eyes.

Annette only chuckled sympathetically. “I would hold up on celebrating just yet.”

Felix tilted his head in confusion but the scholar was already walking away and up the dark path. Without a word, the hunter followed behind dutifully, even as anxiety began its ascent up his spine and outward. He was usually so keen on listening to his instincts, but the fruition of his desire was a far more inciting fruit, caution numbed beneath this rare taste of hope.

Even as the looming blue-gray academic hall broke free from the forest, a multi-eyed monolith beset by the icy moon overhead and nestled close to a murky, gleaming lake, Felix chose to ignore the tightness in his stomach for now. The tall ebony arches of Byrgenwerth’s gates barred the path forward, a willful portent, and still he would not stop- he was so close, he could feel it.

Dimitri was already within arm’s reach.

They would be together again, Felix just knew it.

* * *

**Byrgenwerth**

"The scholars first brought it here, the Old Blood—the discovery of a century. And the grandeur of the college was since elevated, a gem in the heart of darkness. But they did not heed themselves and paradise fell.”

The college, for all its legend and grandeur, was- as Felix had expected- still an ancient building, comatose in the absence of its students. Merely a stone shell, howling so very quietly despite its many mouths and eyes, broken windows and crushed walls and old rafters creaking with age; the decrepit statues of gray saints long departed stood outside in greeting, idle legacies forever lost with their names overgrown with thick blue ivy, faces scraped raw from years in fog.

There laid an eerily white lake around the other side of the building, the white moon’s reflection bulbous and close in the still water, a vain face peering closer into the mirror in their endless search for perfection; it seemed to hum to him, speaking in words that kept slipping through, foreign and yet familiar all the same.

But as the black hunter approached, he only shook his head like a bad spell; simply the side effects of an encroaching headache, surely- and continued following Annette into the pale-stoned building.

Inside was largely what he had expected of an abandoned, locked away college: hollow lecture halls, dark study rooms, and despairingly long and silent hallways that looped into each other upward, stagnated in-between a dreamy mist of emptiness and the reality of loneliness. Their footsteps bound down the cold skeleton of Byrgenwerth with only the slight creaks of the floorboards and the scurrying of mice to greet them.

Felix stared at the unresponsive back of his guide, Annette’s soft curly hair bouncing off her shoulders with every step; she was peculiar in every sense of the word, young and bright-eyed in contrast to the sovereign blackness she inhabited, her clothing, even for a scholar, so foreign to him. In fact, it perplexed him deeply as to why she was still here when all her other colleagues had fled.

Unless she was the keeper of the Wisdom, then that only made sense as to her deep apprehension earlier when he brought it up.

He squinted at her bright form, trying to fit her into this tangled web they’d all become bound up in. The question, however, was how it related to Dimitri. Felix already knew that he was not here- he could not sense him anywhere. But the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth could give him some answers.

“Right through here,” Annette said, pressing her hand on a door. She turned and looked solemnly at Felix, a mix of warning and sympathy ebbing from the sweet blue of her gaze. She smiled shortly, adding firmly, “And mind your manners, please.”

“My...manners? You’re just showing me the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth, right?”

“I am, and that’s why you have to be courteous.”

Felix did not understand what the young woman meant, not until she quietly opened the door and led him into a dimly lit room. It was a large study, concave in structure, the far wall a towering collection of bookshelves and archives, tomes of every size and shape piled upon each other and nestled against all sorts of contraptions, bottles, vials, bones.

There were stacks of newspapers and novels everywhere, and a thin layer of dust covered just about every surface. However, despite the darkness, the room was not so hidden for the large, stretching windows facing the moon-lit lake allowed cool beams to flood into the far end of the room.

And that’s when Felix saw her.

A wheelchair turned to face the lake. A girl’s hands tapping idly along a small writing desk next to her. Silver hair, pale as the moon.

Behind him, Annette stood dutifully by the door and waited with bated breath. He continued forward slowly towards the figure, each step creaking louder than the next, until he entered the domain of the moonlight and looked down at his mysterious host.

Silver hair. Pink skin, like that of a delicate mouse. Pale blood moon eyes. The same one from his dreams? No, Felix understood this girl was something else, but edged so closely to the prophet that inhabited his sleep, it made him peer even closer. In fact, her entire figure, tucked away quite frailly in a black wheelchair, her gaze turned down at a book she was reading – almost like a child at bedtime.

It was not until Felix cleared his throat that the red moon greeted him distastefully.

“...Do you have the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth?”

Her eyes narrowed into two thin slits. “What nonsense are you talking about? I _am_ the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth.” Her haughty voice was high, shrill as a church bell- a choir mouse.

Felix felt like laughing; he settled for a derisive scoff. “You? But you’re just a little girl.”

“Oh no,” Annette whispered behind him and covered her eyes.

Like blood befouling clear water, the pale of her eyes shifting a fierce crimson, black consuming the moon in wicked fury, and all the room’s meager heat deserted it; the very air seemed to stretch and contort as specters shapeless and fanged clawed from the tomes, the floorboards, the very walls, a house of dead brought to life in a sudden blizzard.

The child- _the woman_ spoke a command like a slighted God and the hunter’s heart stopped.

“Get out.”

“What the-!”

_**“Get. Out.”** _

The forms swirled in agitation, and descended, tearing through the air wailing like bullets.

Annette’s desperate hand slinked around Felix’s and harshly tugged him away from the deluge. Into the hall he was hauled, gasping like a man thrown overboard.

Out of the room, she slammed the hunter against the wall and stabbed an accusing finger at him.

“What did I say?! How hard is it to just be a little courteous? You hunters are all beasts, the lot of you!” She hissed viciously, cheeks turning an angry pink.

He could only stare at her in awe- a mix of respect as well for her ferocity. “Well, you never told me that the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth was a wheel-chair bound little girl!”

“She’s not little—she’s twenty-one years old! And she’s the smartest and wisest damn woman in this wretched waste of a world— and probably your only chance to find your friend! And you blew it!”

Felix’s breath stopped. “Are you serious?”

“Yes!” Annette snarled and shook her head with exasperation. “Her name is Lysithea and she’s Byrgenwerth’s greatest scholar—and the _last_ scholar. And I can’t believe you said that to her! You couldn’t even last a second without screwing up.”

Felix swallowed, a hard lump in his throat. “W-Will she still talk to me?”

“No...not until she clears her head. She’s stubborn,” Annette sighed, long-suffering and put out. “And even then, I don’t know if she’ll even grant you an audience.”

“Well, let me apologize to her,” Felix said and turned to stalk back to the study when Annette’s arm shot out again.

The young woman shook her head frantically with widened eyes and pulled him back. “Don’t go in there. You offended her and she will not want to see you at all right now.”

Felix threw his hands up. “Well, what can I do, then?”

“I can go talk to her, but it will be hard…” Annette peered off to the side in a deep thought and then snapped her fingers. She blinked with a dazzling gaze and smiled softly. “I think I might have one solution that will grant you some immediate forgiveness.”

“What? Tell me!”

“Ever baked a cake before?”

Felix made a face of disgust. “No. Cake is revolting.”

Annette sighed deeply and closed her eyes. “We...have a lot of work to get to, Mr. Hunter.”

Byrgenwerth creaked back in staunch agreement.

* * *

In the closed moonlit study, where the source of its greatest and most forbidden knowledge sat primly in the prison of her wheelchair, the silver-haired maiden with pale blood moon eyes and a weakened heart glared out to the lake.

It stilled beneath a black starlit sky, but glowed a pure and unblemished white as though it had sucked in all of the light from the watchful moon above, almost like a very thin and translucent layer of snow. But it ebbed in a strange, colorless aura, reflecting an unseeable sky, a world beyond their endless nightmare.

Well- most people, they only see the lake. They only see water. Their eyes had yet to be opened to the hiding truth lying beneath the surface of the world, in either direction. Not her, however. Lysithea’s eyes had been open longer than they had not; and she had grown weary of her elder sight.

A poutful half-frown stretched across the maiden’s pale face as she stared out to the lake- the waking world hidden below the white moon.

“So, that’s Felix? Hpmf. You have terrible taste in men...Dimitri.”


	2. Phase II: Parasomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix closed his eyes. “It’s just a nightmare, Dimitri.”
> 
> “No,” The hunter said with conviction. “No, it all means something.”

**_The moon was out again tonight as it always has been. The stars meandered across the black oceanic abyss. And those who crawl in the sanctuary of shadow wandered out and greeted the streets with teeth and bone. Then the hunters arrived, armed with killing steel and smelled like the deep smoke that never left the Yharnam skies._ **

**_And after five long years or simply, an infuriatingly long and never-ending night, the nerves of childhood hardened immensely in all of the junior hunters of the Workshop._ **

**_The hunt continued, the night droned on- as did the dream- and yet, in a world rendered so monstrous, it was bound to consume itself; it cannibalized all that was good, and yet what survived wasn’t without hope. It was a hope borne of teeth and torn skin and suffering, but hope all the same._ **

**_There were still beasts, there was still the scourge, and there were still areas of deep infection. But the blood of the night no longer belonged to that of poor, child hunters—and the creatures themselves knew this. The night was always the same but those who stalk through the shadows were older now, fiercer, and ever more deadly._ **

**_One of whom who stood stalwart as midnight began to smother the streets and housetops around him with its black shawl, and from that absolute blackness, the red mystique of torches and lanterns burst to life in blooms all throughout Yharnam; vivid flame and harsh shadows, the gleam of weapons silver and rusted, it sown itself even above and shadowed the stars and moon until they were nothing but white specks against the black oceanic sky._ **

**_The creatures lurched out from their fetid crevices as the night lulled them from their respite, a song for the sick and damned, eyes aglow like the malevolent hellfires of the earth. The huntsmen, dragging their blood-tinted axes across the cobblestone, walking alongside their fellow beast down the darkened streets of their ruined metropolis. Mania and illness unified on these long and bitter nights, with reason nowhere near in sight._ **

**_From the ends of the city, the waning moon hovered up above, a thin and shriveling thing dyeing the world an ashen gray, moonlight revealing the small deceptions lying wait in the corners- slipping like a beam over the wet fur of mad dogs and limping bodies, and finally highlighting the waiting figure beneath the broken gaslights._ **

**_The beasts saw him first, the man watching them silently. His hair, long and ebony, caught and held the moonlight, flowing from his shoulders in the cold wind. When he finally stepped out into the dark, they saw the spurs of hunter boots and a long feathered cloak of ink that fluttered outward, revealing the sheen of a dreaded foreign blade._ **

**_The beasts stumbled back with frightened howls and reeled as the Vileblood Wolf stalked forward. Chikage slipped slowly out its red ribbon-wrapped sheath, steel singing forlornly in the darkness._ **

**_Five long years, the child hunter from Cainhurst slinked forward vicious and prouder than his prey, with nerves hardened to that of cool stone. For a moment, the hunter—five years older and five years crueler, stared off at the horde shivering before him. His red eyes glazed over with the look one reserved for an unwanted wretch._ **

**_One of the smaller beasts, pent with arrogance and ignorance, dashed forward only for its head to slice through cleanly and roll down the street. Its brothers howled in a pain and sped away, climbing over one another in a desperate attempt to escape._ **

**_The pack of them kept running, passing through flickering shadow and flame until the street stretched out towards an open gate in the distance, one of escape to Cathedral Ward. Their legs pumped quicker, blood pumping thinly as they made the final stretch to their freedom awaiting them in the near distance._ **

**_Just as the pack reached the gate, something large stepped from its own clutch of shadow, blocking the passage way to Cathedral Ward. A looming figure draped in a bleeding blue ink long coat, torn ragged by the beasts of a half-decade spent in pursuit, crowned by the proud mantle of a white-fur collar._ **

**_The White Lion, so tall that his striking figure and the long shadow practically tripped the fleeing horde from fright._ **

**_A sharp and elongated spear swung up over the moon—a rifle and blade conjoined in a killing bind like some grotesque twin, and the steel thrusted deeply into the open chest of the shivering leader; the gun exploded violently with fire and shot out through the back and into the other wolves’ faces with a bloody combustion. Once the red smoke cleared, they were all but charred bodies, punched with glistening holes, and slumped desiccated on the pavement._ **

**_The last beast yelped at the sight of the towering hunter and turned tail to head back._ **

**_Escape seemed possible if only for a second, then the flash of a single blade cut through darkness. The creature stared helplessly at the Vileblood Wolf’s cold, unmoving face; it’s sight shifted, rolling down and onto the red cobblestone until the only thing that filled its sight was the heels of black boots and the small pool of black, swirling liquid._ **

**_Another pair of boots came to stand in front of the other, the newcomer still and calm while the former’s tapped rather impatiently with the sort of irritable nature expected of a spurn partner._ **

“ **_What?”_ **

“ **_I could have handled it.”_ **

“ **_Oh, I know. But I wanted to help—is there anything wrong with that?”_ **

“ **_Those beasts were mine. You were supposed to be off taking care of the villagers by the chapel area.”_ **

“ **_Already done! I came up here to check on you.”_ **

**_A light, nearly playful sound of a slap against padded fabric briefly rebounded through cold air followed by a repressed chuckle, buried in someone’s palm._ **

“ **_Needlessly obtrusive, as usual. Who are you trying to impress?”_ **

“ **_There is no one here but you.”_ **

**_The voice turned pleasant, though not without bite. “And don’t you forget that. Also, next time, don’t steal my kill or you’ll sleep on the rocks with Sylvain.”_ **

“ **_By the Great Ones, he drools! Fine, fine, whatever you wish, Felix.”_ **

“ **_Good. Come now—let’s head back to the Hunter’s Dream, get you washed of all that muck.”_ **

“ **_You say as though you’re not dirtied yourself, dearest.”_ **

“ **_I’m quite vexed by all this bloodshed in my hair, thank you very much.”_ **

**_A laugh, dry and simple, but sweet enough between them. “Well, then, I suppose we’ll have to take care of each other again tonight...”_ **

“ **_Hm, I suppose so. Ah, come here, you.”_ **

**_The smaller pair of boots rose up on their tiptoes as their companion stayed planted firmly on the ground, drifting as if caught in a warm spell. They met in the middle and swayed, anchored amidst the bloodshed and darkness to each other._ **

**_One might have huffed when the other bit him, though it was followed swiftly by pleasure when he swallowed the sound down his throat, lover tasting lover and all their sweet brutality._ **

**_Finally, the smaller boots’ heels lowered back down, and something of a grumble emitted deeply._ **

“ **_Excited already? You’re such a fiend- is it because we’re surrounded by bodies and such?”_ **

“ **_No, it’s just you, all the time.”_ **

“ **_Hah. Admit it,” The boot stepped forward and nudged the still vision of the beast; the poor thing still could not move, could not speak, fixated eternally at the shifting boots of the hunters who slayed it. “You like having an audience.”_ **

**_Just silence in the quiet night. The sounds of church bells ringing in the distance. Muffled voices echoing from down below. Lanterns glowing red along the street and dropped torches burning, dying on the blood-drenched pavement. Someone breathed slowly out of their nose and a ghost of smile through a beckoning voice._ **

“ **_Let’s go home...Dimitri.”_ **

**_Hands joined, and the two pairs of black boots, stained with mud and blood, walked away closely until their cold, strong backs disappeared into the rising mist of the street. And the head waited, it watched, and peered intimately at the attentive, low moon that hovered overhead._ **

**_A poor, weeping mother crying somewhere far off; candlelight, like the feeling of romance in the air._ **

**_🌖 Waning Gibbous 🌖_ **

_By now, Felix had gotten used to this little game that he and Dimitri played._

_In their older age, he had become terribly sensitive to the grime and demanded for a bath if either one of them came out slathered disgustingly, which was difficult considering their occupations. That’s when Dimitri decided to scheme against him, revealing a nature of cruelty beneath duty._

_Usually, Felix was careful in his hunt, mastering the art of killing quickly and swiftly with little residue leftover. Naturally, this was a skill instinctual to one from Cainhurst, mirroring the scarlet hunters that moved quickly through the air like a flash—untouchable and utterly phantom like in their movements._

_While he spent the last five years with the Workshop, he committed himself wholly to his lost homeland’s art of clean killing. Even his own figure reflected this; while he hardly gained any height, he got leaner, quicker, with sharper eyes and refined reflexes the likes of jungle beasts. Everything upon him reflected a quick and sleek death, moving autonomously in between shadow and light seamlessly, never lingering, always on the prowl._

_Then there was Dimitri. Once two boys matched closely in height, five years of hardship had fed him incredibly well. The former executioner, this golden-haired lion cub with starry eyes and a light voice of boyhood had become steeled with a stormy, cold gaze, a sharp face, devoid of any baby roundness, and sprouted up disturbingly high in height, towering even over Sylvain, a towering frame of raw muscle._

_No longer a child, hardly a cub at all (unless one were to catch him on breaks, giggling along to Sylvain’s terrible jokes); he was a lion, bigger than half the beasts in Yharnam and twice as fierce, refined to perfection like a worthy blade under the hellish forge of the hunt._

_Similar to Felix, Dimitri, too, kept to his own traditional way of killing. The Workshop tried to rewire an executioner’s mind to slaughter roughly and irregularly with frantic passion, while Dimitri stayed true to this brutish, winding finale of a guillotine's blade._

_He faced his prey with his rifle spear, spinning it with the night winds swirling ferociously like a sudden storm; the hunter would pause instinctively, just a second, a heartbeat- the eye of a hurricane, before striking forward. Then came the fire, the smoke and metal, burning through the air hotly until it suffocated the entire area like a wildfire._

_A storm, a tempest. He slaughtered and tore through the rising horde with a fearsome might unseen by human hands- even of those bewitched by blood and madness. And for those who walked on two legs and had spoken words, Dimitri reserved the act of beheading, liberated them from their madness by giving them an incredibly human death._

_Perhaps it was only merciful. But the style was so distinctively belonging to the former Executioners of the Healing Church that even the remaining Yharnamites recognized the large hunter as he stalked down the streets._

_Felix was the serenity of death; Dimitri was chaos manifest._

_And in the former’s need for cleaning after a long day of hunting, he found that his partner was more or less prone to dirty himself shamelessly through blood and muck. Felix, rarely, got any of the slaughter on his clothes—even on Chikage which he cleaned afterwards with a cloth. Dimitri, on the other hand, was often pushed to bathe alone while the smaller man waited irritably._

_That was, of course, when Dimitri had thought of something clever. Usually, the two split up and took care of different groups in Yharnam: Felix had the mad hunters and blinded townsfolk that stalked around their empty, destroyed city with killing intent; Dimitri battled the beast folk._

_It was messy work, slaughtering dogs, giant hogs wading in the sewers, carrion crows, and the beast men that festered halfway between the two. At least with men, actual humans at least in form if not mind, were easier to take down without a problem._

_But beasts thrashed, they howled and screamed, and moved around madly—blindly even. Torn guts spilling all around in their rage, foaming drool intermixed with blood and waste._

_Naturally, Dimitri came out of these hunts drenched in the stuff, especially considering how crazed his own fighting style was._

_Then, one night, he innocently (though Felix always accused him latent craftiness) requested for them to switch places for a while. Felix, despite his phantom-like movements, found himself covered in guts and fur while his partner naturally returned with the splattered remains of men on his clothes._

_Dimitri was smiling when he suggested that they should bathe together before returning to the Hunter’s Dream._

_Felix knew that he’d been had, though this did not fully occur to him until Dimitri’s hands, which were only supposed to wash his back, wandered down to other places. Most days, Felix tried his utmost best to keep clean, not out of any desire to keep his partner’s touch at bay (never, never that) but that he was too stubborn to submit himself to Dimitri’s_ underhanded _victory._

_Of course, that was easier said than done, and guts and blood were all but plentiful in Yharnam and parts beyond. Not that he minded in the end anyhow._

_This night, like many nights, was cool to the touch; skin pinkened by the icy kiss of the air. The waters of the city were plagued and putrid, so they always washed themselves in a warm bath house Mercedes had showed to them at the Cathedral Ward, still intact and operational given a little elbow grease. Before the scourge, it was used by the members of the Healing Church after a long day of piety. Now it was the commonplace for two hunters to seek refuge in each other's touch._

_Felix was feeling incredibly fatigued tonight, his muscles so loose and worn out that he only had the will to hunker down in the swirling, incense-scented warmth and dump buckets of water over his sore form. Dimitri was wading a few feet away, and Felix could feel the man’s intense gaze boring holes into his exposed back- his intention clear, like that of a circling beast._

_The hot waters behind him sloshed gently, ripples brushing his thighs in warning; a large, scarred hand touched his nape of his neck, fingers trailing down the curve of his spine and drawing into the small of his back. A low murmur rumbling close to the hunter’s ear, beckoning- aching, hungry with the vigor of a starving dog._

_Or, he supposed, that of a willful lion._

“ _May I wash your back?” Was all Dimitri inquired of him._

_And Felix, far too tired to shrug off his partner and far too worn down from these unsporting games he was used to losing anyway, merely grunted. He closed his eyes, allowing Dimitri to take the wash bucket from his hands._

_Warm, soapy water spilled over on his bruised skin; a gradual, flushing spell seeping into the cool crevices of his body. A soft rag scrubbed gently into his back and Felix felt himself naturally lean back and melted into a larger, anticipating body._

_A hand slinked under his limp arm and traveled up to the soapy chest with amourous fingers. Felix was too weary to really care and hummed as Dimitri abandoned his feint of washing and began to explore the firm, lithe body before him._

“ _When did you become such a lech? I should really stop leaving you alone with Sylvain,” He muttered lowly, arching into the touch all the same. He choked a bit as Dimitri’s fingers crept up to his nipples, running smaller circles around the area playfully._

_The larger man hummed with a gentle smile, pressed into Felix’s head, so he felt as much as heard his jubilation.“He is not at fault. Affairs of the night are merely a front for him—poetry, opera, music, those are the things he loves sincerely. I am just one to be overwhelmingly greedy by your presence.”_

“ _Greedy, indeed—” Felix gasped when his partner suddenly pulled on his nipple, flicking the tip with his finger nail. He gave a half sob into his fist and threw his head away, ears tinted red. “Bold too. Fucking bastard.”_

“ _I can’t help it, truly.”_

“ _I indulge you too much—allowing you to touch me like this whenever you please. I should teach you to practice moderation!”_

“ _We live in a world of extremes. The hunt is long and weary. Won’t you indulge with me in being human, just a bit?”_

_Dimitri’s other hand slinked up, long, strong fingers wrapping around Felix’s bare neck and gently forcing him to look down. His other hand, the teasing one, rolled the tip of the hunter’s pink flesh between his fingers and Felix felt like crying—breathing heavily as a dull heat roiled and rose somewhere down below. He could not even look away, held captured by his lover’s unyielding grip._

“ _Bastard...” Felix growled through heated, teeming tears. It was obstinance for obstinance’s sake at this point, but he had never been a graceful loser. “You just take what you want, don’t you?”_

“ _Do you want me to stop?”_

_When Felix said nothing, a smile curled against the back of his neck and Dimitri’s hand reached down and softly curled around the man’s twitching length. His grip was slippery, with soap and water, and the cool slick congealing beneath his possessive fingers made things easier—faster, when he began to quickly jerk Felix’s cock._

_Felix bit into his hand to suppress a mangled moan, shivering as the sear spread out from the pit of his stomach to his cock, flush with sensation, responsive to the rough claiming. He leaned back against Dimitri’s neck, the side of his head buried under the man’s chin---gasping, reeling; he’s drowning violently, no relief of air coming to his lungs, as his partner’s grip tightened and his movements quickened with a greediness for release. There was nothing for him to grab, nothing for him to cling on except Dimitri, while the pressure boiled over hotly._

_Dimitri’s head turned over and captured Felix’s lips in a wet kiss, his tongue invading the man’s mouth; Felix’s body greeted each touch and taking ravenously---hurried, listing, writhing, and the crest loomed, ready to tear him asunder._

_He pulled away to choke and sob, tears flowing freely down his cheeks, his lips, salt and rust and soap and Dimitri._ “ _Dimitri- I can’t…”_

“ _I know,” The larger man grunted. His free hand wrapped around Felix's waist, holding him pressed tightly to his chest as his other hand jerked sloppily with a quick and vengeful hunger. The pressure surged so quickly and threw itself over the precipice; Felix wrenched and cried out loudly as he came violently in Dimitri’s hand, hot and heavy, shivering as he gave himself over to pleasure at last._

_Spent and ravished, Felix’s limbs went slack and he allowed Dimitri to pick him up into his arms. He sank slowly against the heaving body, panting wildly as the lulled exhaustion finally spilled over and possessed him fully._

_The larger man chuckled, self-satisfied, and he leaned in to pepper sweet, fluttering kisses all over Felix’s sweaty face._

“ _You’re happy, now, aren’t you?” The smaller man grumbled irritably and moved to push Dimitri’s face away, only for his willful hand to softly pat the man’s cheek instead._

_Dimitri merely laughed as though Felix had said something humorous and hushed him with a deep kiss._

_The duress of the hunt, even the more grueling and exhausting of trails spent battling ungodly creatures indescribable to the eye, was often abated within steam and these tiled walls, soft after hours at the bathhouse. Salacious games aside, sometimes Felix and Dimitri would simply sit in the water and let the warmth soothe their wounds, their souls, content to exist together somewhere safe, somewhere wholly human._

_And in the moment, he could forget all about hunt. The beasts. The mad townsfolk. The moon that never set. The stars that never slept. The sun that never rose. The dream that never awoke. And the blood that never stayed inside the veins._

_Everything around him stayed the same, as if unchained from time, floating in a screaming space it carved its bloody own from the cosmos- unmoving to the beat of life, unheeding to the finality of death. A world that refused to grow old; it clung to childhood, one filled with blood, cruelty, and callousness._

_For them, childhood had ended at different intervals of their lives. But at the very least, they had each other._

_And so, Felix closed his eyes and forgot about everything that stalked outside the bathhouse; he forgot about childhood and bloodless days and instead lulled his head against Dimitri and wished that, at the very least, time would spare them the same courtesy it does to Yharnam and give this moment eternal preservation._

_But this wish came from a long neglected place in Felix’s heart. And he opened his eyes in surprise: he’d long thought the idealistic child in him dead._

_Roused, he twisted around and pushed himself free from his captivity, catching Dimitri’s hands within his own and forcing his lover against the tiled wall of the pool with renewed hunger._

_“Alright, beast. Your turn.”_

* * *

A whisper- a name, uttered softly from the red lips of the silver maiden.

A command- from God, which echoed across the world, and into hearts of dreams.

A moon, _the_ moon- heard it first; it quivered malevolently, bursting, a splotch of red on the silver visage.

Like a single drop of blood into colorless water.

A name- spilled from a foreign tongue and deaf to the ears of man, sounded distinctly like the call of family- _brother?_

Brother.

**Byrgenwerth – Lysithea’s Study**

With great effort, Felix finally slipped out of the moonlit kitchen, hands cradled close to his chest, baring his peace offering- with an entire chocolate cake on a crystal plate.

Behind him, Annette watched him wordlessly from beside the still-smoking black oven; she gestured encouragingly for him to go with a bemused expression. Her sage advice earlier of how sincerity to Lysithea would only be possible if Felix, himself, went to see her.

But the only thing that was on his mind was how the wheel-chaired maiden was going to kill him for such a poor excuse for a cake—the third after he and Annette burned the other two and watched them immolate in the fires dimly. His dearest hope at this point was that it would taste anywhere close like a cake.

As Felix stepped out into the empty hallway, he listened. The college was silent, naturally, as it was only Annette and Lysithea- and now he too, he supposed- occupying the space since their fellow scholars fled. Hunter’s instinct, but while Felix understood that he was the only one in the hallway, the child in him flared out with an old fear; a five-year-old boy alone in the cold passageways of Cainhurst Castle, searching helplessly for his older brother. 

Voices echoing and stretching far without reply.

Felix shuddered to think of walking through these empty corridors and rooms at the dark of night, without a soul in sight. At least the girls were here as they always have been, but the reception was hardly warm. Now he has to make peace with one of them, presenting this lopsided monstrosity slathered in chocolate frosting.

Lysithea’s study was still shut tight and the sight of its massive, forbidding oak door provoked a rare sense of self-consciousness in the hunter. Even as he came up close with heavy steps, there were the curlings of effervescent moonlight slipping out from under the door. 

Felix’s hand froze inches away from knocking, struck by an invisible force he recognized clinically as fear. Nearby, a clock rang throughout the long, dim corridors, striking the witching hours of midnight.

A hoarse, pained cough emanated from within and Felix’s heart sank ever so slightly as he finally rapped his knuckles against the door frame. The coughing stopped abruptly. 

A moment of suffocating silence with the exception of the college creaking somewhere distantly. 

Finally, a cool, youthful voice.

“You may enter.”

Felix sighed through his nose and reluctantly entered the study with the cake secured in one hand. The Wisdom of Byrgenwerth was still by her window, illuminated by the cool rays of the moonlight and the radiant, colorless lake. Her silver hair was luminescent like the silk of a spider web in the gentle light, and she leaned against her armrest, fingers rapping methodically with the sort of patience expected of a scholar. But Felix sensed the note of irritation behind it all and hastened onward.

Finally, the hunter was in the glowing moonlight and before the young woman once more. She stared out to the lake intensely; while her pale blood eyes refused to acknowledge Felix, she silently gestured to the small table between them. 

Felix quickly put down his cake offering and stepped back as though he were leaving a tribute to a vengeful God.

Lysithea finally shifted her gaze to the cake, brows furrowed a bit upon the sloppy icing slathered over a semi-collapsed pastry. She moved the plate around, examining all the sides with a close, scrutinizing inspection. Finally, she took her pinky, swiped a bit of the frosting, and licked it.

Stars twinkled in the blood of her eyes.

The woman shifted and reached around, procuring a fork and knife from a tea service behind her Felix hadn’t noticed previously, watching as she then cut into the lopsided cake with vigor and pulled a piece out. The inside, to the hunter’s relief, was a perfect and rich fudge color, and Lysithea slapped it on a plate she took from a nearby stack. She took another plate and waved it nonchalantly in Felix’s direction.

He shook his head. 

“Cake or leave,” She commanded with narrowed eyes, and Felix begrudgingly accepted the plate.

Felix sat down across from her on the windowsill and cut himself a slice. Lysithea handed him his own fork and the pair stared at each other pointedly before going into their pastry at once. The Wisdom of Byrgenwerth’s face glowed pink with delight when she took a bite, cheeks puffed out with the joy of a child. Lysithea made loud smacking sounds as she chewed, savoring each and every bite carefully—lovingly, even. 

Felix, on the other hand, was hesitant. Even as a boy, he despised sweets and Cainhurst Castle was filled with different pastries as per the court’s particular diet. Too much sugar made him slightly sick—nauseous even, and could only manage to will down a small spongy piece of the cake without throwing up in front of Lysithea.

Once he placed his fork down, Lysithea finally turned to him, chocolate crumbs sticking around her mouth. She licked her lips and scrutinized him and his neglected piece of cake wordlessly. Finally, the young woman pushed everything to the side and went back to staring at the white lake.

“It was decent,” Lysithea stated simply.

Felix repressed a small smile; if Annette’s cursory teaching on the Wisdom’s secret language was to be believed, it meant that he was forgiven—so long as he could continue to mind his manners. He sat back in his seat and followed her gaze to the colorless water, shining illuminatingly from the low moon.

“I know why you’re here,” She said without looking at him. Her fingers began to rap gently against her arm rest, methodical and automatic, like the gears of a clock. “I was actually expecting you to show up, sooner or later.”

“Dimitri was here,” Felix stated. It was not a question.

“So you’re not as idiotic as you look—good. I won’t have to simplify things with you.” The Wisdom nodded. “Yes, Dimitri was here, but that was quite some time ago.”

Felix leaned forward. “Why did he come to see you? Why did he leave? Why hasn’t he returned?”

“One question at a time, my insolent little friend,” Lysithea sneered back and reached for another bite of cake. The young woman, despite being wheelchair bound, was rather spirited and youthful with very little sign of weakness anywhere. Even her voice had a sharp bite to it that had Felix sitting straight-backed all times.

After putting down a fair bit more of the cake, she set her fork down again and dabbed her chin with a cloth napkin. “Now, I’ll tell you. But that will break my promise to him.”

“Promise?”

Lysithea licked her fork. “Of course—he knew you would be looking for him and insisted to me that I keep his location a secret. It would be awfully rude of me to betray his trust like that.”

“Wh—”

“And even if I did tell you, you would never believe me. It’s simply too...absurd for someone as un-insightful as you to understand,” She explained with a raised brow.

Felix’s breath hissed sharply through gritted teeth and he bowed his head between his clenched fists. His blood was throbbing hotly, every scrape of her fork bouncing within his head loudly and in shattering echoes. The hunter never imagined that Dimitri would hide anything from him, no less would intentionally keep himself away from reach, but he had done it with Leonie, and now with Lysithea, he had done it again. 

He held his head as faint flashes of images he both recognized and found foreign—pained, blurred memories— flickered within the mire, and the unease they arose within him shifted his feelings from anticipation to betrayal.

Why hadn’t Dimitri told him? What was he so desperate to hide?

“I did not come all the way here, tracking through snake guts, mud, and shit, just for you to tell me that my own fucking partner doesn’t want me to find him. Because I am not going back to Yharnam without him. Do you understand me?” Felix said without turning his head, every word drawn out slowly in absolute anguish. He was trying his best not to shout, suppressing the violence building up at the pit of his throat. His hands curled and uncurled to this chilly air, as if to grab onto something tightly and never let go.

“Yes, yes, your commitment is noted,” Lysithea said nonchalantly, shrugging off the hunter’s barely concealed ire. “Not many can make it all the way through here in one piece. I commend you for that. However, my opinion still stands: Dimitri made me swear that I would not tell you. And besides, your eyes have not yet been opened.”

“And what does that mean?” Felix spat incredulously.

“Let me ask you this. You know how Dimitri can see...Gods, as he likes to call it? What do you think of that?”

Felix’s face scrunched up, eyes widening at Lysithea’s knowledge of Dimitri’s peculiar nature.

“That he’s...a bit odd? I mean, he’s always seen things that aren’t there.”

Lysithea rolled her eyes and turned back to the lake. “Exactly. This is why you would never understand if I told you.”

“By the Great Ones, please! I need to find him. I’ll do anything to get him back—anything!” Felix suddenly pleaded, hands smashing into the table and nearly upending the cake. The scholar lurched over and caught her treat, throwing her guest a sharp, embittered look. But he was too frantic to notice. “Please, is there anything I can do to prove that I am deserving of your knowledge? As I said before, I refuse to go home without him.”

“Fine, fine! Just don’t desecrate my dinner!” Lysithea snapped and brought the entire plate of cake and placed it on her side of the windowsill protectively. She eyed Felix closely and frowned. “You want to make yourself useful? Go help my Annie.”

“Annette?”

“That’s right. As you can see, I am clearly not...equipped to handle anything physical so my poor Annie has to do all the work. Give her a hand with _everything_ she needs, and return to me once you’re done.”

“If that’s what will make you talk, you got it,” Felix said, standing up so abruptly that the chair was knocked back to the ground.

Before he could leave, Lysithea’s hand shot out and grabbed his. The hunter was pulled forcibly all the way down—over the table and close to the pale blood eyes of Byrgenwerth’s most prestigious scholar. They captivated him in the same way a snake to a cornered mouse in a thicket—utterly paralyzing.

“When I mean by everything, I mean _everything_. Every little thing she wants or needs done, you will help her with it. Do you understand me?”

When Felix silently nodded his head, the woman let him go, turning back towards the mirthless lake that glowed irritably beyond the courtyard of the college.

“And don’t return until you are done—or have more cake. Either or, my lips are shut, good hunter. Now, off with you!”

**Byrgenwerth**

Lysithea was not exaggerating when it came with Annette’s duties.

Perhaps it was Felix’s own mistake to quickly assume that he would only be handling small matters like cooking and cleaning. As it turned out, Annette truly did take care of _everything_ at the college—the ins and outs of maintaining the entire structure and beyond. When the hunter approached the red headed scholar with his begrudging aid, she immediately threw a pair of rubber gloves in his direction.

“What’s this?” He asked, his voice pitching uncharacteristically high.

Annette shook her head and jammed her thumb upward. “Gutters. Go up on the fourth floor and take any balcony window out to the roof.”

“I’m a hunter—not a maid.”

“Then go kill the leaves, Mr. Hunter. Or should I tell Thea that you’re misbehaving?” Annette teased with a raised eyebrow and a certain edge that had the hunter immediately standing up, donning the gloves.

“Fine,” Felix grumbled beneath his breath and turned to leave.

“And don’t come back until all of the gutters are cleared! Diligence, Felix, diligence!”

Diligence was the exact virtue Felix both lacked and needed desperately as he scooped clumps of wet leaves, stuck together in a black, aged goop all around the roof gutter.

For a man who regularly slaughtered beasts and waded through blood and guts without so much blinking an eye, the putrid smell of mushed leaves and rainwater in a ball made him want to choke and turn away. He spent the next hour, reluctantly, tossing out gunk from the stone gutters and to the courtyard below.

Felix wondered how Annette was able to stomach doing so many menial tasks around the entire college if they were all of a similar calibre. It was not as though anyone else was living there but them, though the secured gates that surrounded the area provided the two scholars much needed protection from the forest.

The second thing Felix was tasked to help with was cleaning all the windows around the college—each and every room. The hunter said nothing but grunted wearily when Annette tossed him a wet rag and a bucket. She happily claimed that there is some wonder to cleaning, that by performing simple tasks that the mind can clear itself and think clearly.

However, after a hundred windows with the exception of Lysithea’s study were scrubbed, Felix realized that none of these chores helped him one bit with his anxiety. His mind still ran rampant with thoughts on Dimitri, bouncing in different directions. Once he returned with a pure black rag and a bucket of murky water, Annette requested something that provoked a strange sense of relief in him,

It was only natural that ‘relaxing’ chores to a hunter was hunting.

The next task, one that Annette had confessed that she had been putting off until she was more prepared, was clearing out the gardens. When she and Lysithea reclaimed Byrgenwerth, they had returned to discover strange and vicious creatures wandering about the college. Annette was able to repel the horde back into the gardens, but since then, had refused to go anywhere near it out of fear. 

The creatures were things Felix had never seen either: slimy gray humanoids with tentacles for mouths; monsters with human legs and arms but the heads of mosquitoes—eyes, wings, and even the long, black bug legs poking out the back; finally, a gigantic centipede that had taken up residence in an old tree that glowed a peculiar white and blue in the darkness known as the Celestial Centipede.

“I’ll help you!” The scholar huffed determinedly as she walked him to the garden, though she was clearly jittery with nerves as she spoke. “The only thing I have to warn you is to be careful with those brain suckers. Get too close and they will suck out everything in your body. And the Garden of Eyes have a lethal bite that can make you go crazy. And the centipede thing—it can shoot things from its mouth. It's probably the toughest thing out here, we should leave it for last.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a natural at this,” Felix huffed with a rare smugness as though he were showing himself off to a younger sibling.

The garden gates were locked tightly, preventing any of the monsters from breaching out into the main courtyard, which was connected to a lake. Inside, moonlit flowers and willow trees decorated a long unattended and overgrown area with deep, edging roots. 

All around the pathways and pavilions stalked the lumbering mosquitoes creatures, clicking softly. Felix understood now why Annette called them “Garden of Eyes” considering how their faces were absolutely covered in gigantic, yellow eyes, shifting in different directions.

Felix immediately sprang forward to do what he did best, and stabbed Chikage right into their backs, slicing off the black appendages that sprouted outward. The creatures squealed wildly before turning around and getting sprayed by Annette’s fire. They sparked up brightly with a pained shrill and crumpled to the pavement as nothing but piles of charred ash.

Some of them flew up into the air and dived right onto Felix—he swerved back at the last second and slashed Chikage across their eyes. Fire continued to shoot out in different directions until nearly half of the rocky garden smelled like charcoal, with bits of smoke rising from the ground.

The brain suckers were harder to kill as every hack from Felix’s blade felt like cutting through a rock. They were durable, so much so that his arm was beginning to give away. They hissed at him, threw spit into his face, and tried to grab his head a few times, only to be repelled by Annette. Felix sliced Chikage across their necks, purple blood spurting violently into the air.

There was only the centipede left, which the two took cover from after it began to shoot fire at them from afar. Felix dove in after the second ball of flames and kept closely to its behind as he hacked at its back. 

It was sturdy, almost like a tree trunk; Annette peaked over the column and threw back a fireball as Felix jumped in at the last section and finally stabbed Chikage through its mouth. It squealed and thrashed around as he pressed his foot against its back and pulled out. The thing gave out a shriek and collapsed against the ground, withering in a panicked seizure.

Felix spun around and Annette threw him a weak thumbs up, her smiling face covered in black ash and sweat. He had forgotten the joys of hunting with a partner—a support system in the heat of fighting and killing. In fact, it felt like years since he felt this good, though it was a mere exaggeration since Dimitri only went missing a while ago.

And yet Felix felt like he was forgetting his partner’s own voice and face.

He and Annette stumbled back inside the college once they made sure the entire gardens were completely clear, and collapsed in her personal office upon return. Felix closed his eyes and slumped back into the soft lounge she had by the coffee table; Annette herself buried herself beneath the piles of papers on her desk. The two stayed there in peaceful silence, not so much sleeping, but something in between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Finally, Annette lifted her head up and smiled. “You're a really good fighter, Felix.”

Felix gave her a short laugh. “Same to you—practically burned that entire garden down.”

“Hah. Who cares about flowers these days, anyway?”

“I can think of one person…” He muttered offhandedly with his mind wandering memories of houseplants growing in the coolness of the moonlight.

She giggled. “I say that, but Thea loves her lilies still. It’s practically the only good reason to go into the woods nowadays. You can find some of the loveliest flowers there…” She trailed off, shuffling her papers with a sigh before setting them aside. “You really are helping me with everything huh? We’re not even done yet—there’s the library to organize and the floors to wipe. And we have secured the perimeter once again and cook dinner. I mean, I’m sure you did not cross literal hell just to be my errand boy.”

“Whatever it takes for your ‘Thea’ to start talking.”

Annette stared at him with an expression he could not decipher and shifted forward solemnly. “This person you’re looking for, what is he to you?”

“He’s my partner.”

“Partner in the hunt or…”

Felix felt himself frowning deeply, not so much at Annette but the wandering thoughts that invaded the sanctuary of his head, fuzzy images of blue eyes and golden hair. He shook his head and groaned audibly into the room. Annette only laughed at this, a sympathetic understanding ringing from the pleasantness of her voice.

“How long?” She asked kindly and tilted her head.

“Five years?” Felix said, half-quizzical on the dates. “I suppose since we were ‘kids’ if you can call us that, but it was around the time we joined the Workshop.”

“I get it. Thea and I have been together since we first arrived in Byrgenwerth. Now everything’s all decrepit and abandoned, so it’s just us here.” A small smile stole away on her face. “Not that I mind.”

“What happened to the college, exactly?”

“Many things...Thea and I were students here though she was much more talented than I. The college board evaluated her to work with some of the head scholars with experiments on the artifacts found in the Chalice dungeons.”

“Chalice...dungeons?”

“Oh yeah, strange stuff. Deep, deep, deep beneath Yharnam are a series of ruins, which hold evidence of an ancient race which existed before man. The scholars brought artifacts up- these golden chalices, to study including the Old Blood.”

“And then the Healing Church became a thing,” Felix said, frowning.

“I’m afraid so…” Annette trailed off, wringing her hands together. “But... that was before our time. When I arrived, they were still exploring the dungeons for more chalices, even when the plague began to infect Yharnam. After that, the beast scourge happened—experiments gone wrong and I had to escape with Lysithea. Many of our peers...did not make it. Not so much died but they became something else entirely,” She closed her eyes, brow furrowed as if to forget a bad dream.

“Why did you come back?” Felix asked.

“Thea left her research notes here. Of course, the entire college was abandoned and we were so tired of moving. Might as well make this our permanent home and retain our studies somehow. It’s not like Yharnam or Cathedral Ward would be any safer for us.”

“It is a nice arrangement. The entire college is surrounded by that towering fence. You’re clearly capable in a fight. And you have that...strange lake outside, so I suppose you don’t go thirsty.”

“The lake…” Annette echoed and stared off with an uncomfortable silence into the room. It seemed like a dangerous, paralyzing thought had overtaken her, rending the scholar mute from inaudible shock—something, which Felix keenly sensed.

After a moment, she stood up very slowly and walked over to the door. The charming, bubbly young woman had suddenly become cold and inaccessible as Felix stared at her back. Her hand was hovering over the door knob and then she said in a hurried, quiet voice.

“I need to go see Lysithea about something. Why don’t you rest for a while? I won’t call for you until much later.”

Felix prompted himself up on his elbows and arched a brow. “Is something wrong?”

The woman shook her head but she refused to turn around to meet his gaze. “No, it’s...a private matter. Don’t worry! Just take a nap. When you wake up, I’ll have some more chores you can help me with.”

“Are you sure-”

But before Felix could finish, Annette had already slipped out of the door and down the hallway. Her footsteps bounded softly until they faded quietly in the distance, leaving the hunter completely alone in the study. 

He stared aimlessly at the door, still completely in dismay for the strange display he just witnessed. It was as though she had suddenly been possessed by a spirit and it left him with an aching feeling of dread.

Felix did not know what else to do but lie back down against the lounge chair and stare up at the ceiling, eyes running over the web of cracks and stains that covered its surface. He blinked slowly, still wondering if he were dreaming at all and everything which happened in the many hours was simple fabrication from exhaustion.

Naturally, the hunter’s eyelids grew heavy, his breathing slowed, and without a second thought, he drifted into a quiet slumber.

🌗 **_Third Quarter_ ** 🌗

_It was a single word._

_Felix had heard it through the thinly veiled curtain of his slumber and opened his groggy eyes to the sight of Dimitri laying down beside him. The hunter was sleeping, that much Felix knew, but something was off._

_Around them, the white glow of the flowers swayed with the chill of the wind; the moon was still watching them from above, the attentive caretaker since their childhood. Sylvain and Ingrid were nowhere to be seen and Dimitri began to mutter again._

_His pale face was scrunched up together tightly, a cold sweat trailing down across his furrowed brow. The hunter’s hand curled up into the wet soil beneath his fingers, twitching and desperately grasping onto anything solid as he let out a strangled choke. There was a word, which Felix had trouble hearing, but his partner’s shaky utterance was enough for him to realize that he was calling for someone._

_Felix prompted himself up on his elbows and leaned over to inspect Dimitri closely. The man was breathing haggard through his mouth, head moving left and right in search of something invisible. Felix’s heart was practically beating against his fragile rib cage as he reached over and cupped Dimitri’s disturbingly cold cheek._

_His hand held the other’s, his grip a little too tight, and began to beckon pleads of awakening—rare, soft words of endearment shared only between them in the most private of moments._

_And then, Felix heard the word through a half sob._

“ _El…”_

_The hunter shook Dimitri’s shoulders frantically and the man’s blue eyes, dark with sleep, fluttered open with glistening tears. Felix moved back and watched as the latter breathed out, choking and stilted—like a nearly drowned man being pulled out of the depths and onto the land._

_His gaze was bouncing all over the sky before landing on Felix. They stared at each other wordlessly and Dimitri’s eyes softened in relief when his lover touched the back of his hand. It was just a simple tap, but a reassuring, gentle touch nonetheless._

“ _You were having a nightmare,” Felix stated quietly._

“ _Yes…” Dimitri whispered._

“ _What did you see?”_

“ _I...I’m not sure. It felt so real…”_

“ _Tell me.”_

“ _I saw her—Edelgard. She was calling out to me but…”_

_Felix shifted closer, moving to stroke the top of his hand.“But what?”_

_Dimitri’s eyes riveted to him, soft and dull like water. “Her hair was white,” He murmured, cracked and stricken._

_The other man fell silent and peered off to the side, but he never ceased in soothing his lion. The air around them went still with not a sound invading the sanctuary of their dream. Finally, Dimitri sat up and leaned his body against the hunter for support, each breath like a gasp for life. There was a certain beauty to the man’s moments of weakness but this time around, it felt more chilly than anything else._

“ _I think something terrible happened to her,” He muttered. “I haven’t seen her at all in weeks and now this dream…”_

“ _Do you think it’s an omen?”_

“ _It was terrifying, Felix. She was trapped somewhere—somewhere far from here. She kept calling out to me but...but I could not reach her. No matter how far I ran, I couldn’t...I can’t.”_

_Felix closed his eyes. “It’s just a nightmare, Dimitri.”_

“ _No,” The hunter said with conviction. “No, it means something…”_

_Suddenly, Dimitri gave a yelp. He lurched over and held the sides of his head tightly, eyes closed with raw, pained expression. Felix immediately bent over, his hands thrown protectively around the man’s torso for support as he leaned in with a paling expression._

“ _Dimitri! What’s wrong?”_

“ _My head...it hurts,” The hunter groaned weakly and stumbled over onto his knees. Felix gently pushed him back until he was laying down and hovered over the man closely._

_Dimitri always had headaches—they were chronic and came so often that all those that remained of the Workshop knew how to deal with it. Around the time he first joined, it was Ingrid who pointed to tea and a cold compress rather than a small blood transfusion. Not only did it work miracles but Dimitri himself had developed a keen sense on when the headaches came and took care of it himself. Neither of them had expected this one to come on so suddenly._

“ _Stay here, I’ll-”_

“ _No!” Dimitri shouted and lurched up, grabbing Felix's arm. The other hunter eyed his partner curiously as he closed his eyes and swallowed audibly. “Please...don’t leave me.”_

“ _But your headache,”_

“ _It feels...different this time around. I don’t think any tea will solve it. Please, could you just stay with me?” He begged, staring right at Felix with a pang of desperation he’d never sensed before. In fact, it almost seemed like the man was scared- though Felix could not be sure of what, exactly._

_Without another word, he laid down right next to Dimitri and allowed his partner to slink his arms around his torso and pull him into a tight, shivering embrace—the heartbreaking clutch of a terrified child seeking solace._

_Dimitri buried his face in the crook of Felix’s exposed neck and they laid like in the stillness of the garden._

“ _It’s just a headache...I’m sure it will go away,” Felix reassured him with a hoarse voice, fingers wound into the short golden hairs at the back of Dimitri’s neck. He was staring up the black of the oceanic sky, the starry ships that twinkled along the waves. Somehow, despite this moment of peace and serenity, the slow crawl of unease still crept up his throat, and he continued on very shortly. “Edelgard is probably...fine. Maybe she’s busy. She’ll come around.”_

“ _You think so?”_

_Felix swallowed. “Yes.”_

_After a while, Dimitri finally drifted back to sleep, though the pains of his migraine traveled with him back to the unconsciousness with a tightly knit face. His grasp around Felix’s body was locked and hard—petrified of the man leaving; Felix could only shift around slightly and settled rather begrudgingly against Dimitri’s chest._

_And there, once again, the heavy breathing returned like a bad spell and the short, manic muttering echoed softly in the night—a call for someone distant and out of reach._

“ _El...?”_

_Above, the moon glistened in a rare reply._

* * *

The moon was calling out, but mankind did not understand its tongue.

The maiden’s eyes were opening very slowly and she was waning between dreams and awakening.

And the Gods above, ever so sympathetic, were trying to warn their children.

But man did not hear and closed their eyes to the truth.

Except him.

**Byrgenwerth**

Felix awoke to the sound of singing.

He opened his eyes to the dark ceiling and heard a woman’s soft and cheery voice in a melody, bounding down from a place nearby. The hunter was always sensitive to noises, though this one was pleasant, and drifted along slowly at the back of his mind like a mother’s gentle cooing.

Felix rubbed his eyes clean and lifted himself from the lounge chair. It was a much better place to sleep than Ashe’s tree post and definitely dryer than his usual sleeping spot at the Hunter’s Dream, and the relief of a good sleep was quite tactile through the sudden surge of power through his body.

The study was still empty though he suddenly realized that a large blanket had been thrown over him, and a clumped pile of sweaters—a makeshift pillow—were placed delicately where his head had been. The curtains were loose and shielded the moonlight from coming in, the gentle darkness of sleep holding firm. 

Felix peered around and the realization that he was still here, in the great despair of it all.

How long has it been since he returned to the Hunter’s Dream? Felix rarely slept outside of it so long, though the hunter should only be so fortunate he hadn’t been gutted and forced back like usual. However, there was a physical strain to sleeping outside the dream and Felix felt it tick painfully in his lower back, careening upward like a dull flame. As he stretched himself out, the song from earlier got louder with the lyrics gradually becoming more clearer through the closed door of the study.

“ _The madmen with open eyes mutter deaf truths; the brave ones who hunt in the night, kneel to the one hiding in the moon; the wicked ones of the altar steal our kin away, away, away…”_

The voice eventually faded away back into the hallway with just the hum of a song meandering through the air like a music box left open and behind somewhere locked away.

Instinctively, Felix crept out of the study quietly and followed the song through the empty, moon-lit corridors of the college. It was eerie, to be drawn by a single song echoing down the lonesome pathways like a siren, and yet the nature of it was what intrigued Felix the most.

In fact, the entire college itself was something distantly eerie, a foreboding more greater than the streets of Yharnam. At one can at least see the creatures that stalk outside the door—here, a place forcibly abandoned by practitioners of forbidden knowledge meant something else entirely.

The melody got stronger with a sweet voice, which sang of things he had never heard of before, things that remained in the great mystery of poetry and foreboding.

“ _Close thy doors, light the incense, for the hunt comes for all; Great Ones above and near, watch with tears the birth of their childhood…”_

Despite the eeriness of it all, the person singing it gave the song a strange tone of childhood cheer- something innocent and pure that captivated the Hunter who long forgotten his own boyhood. Felix stood hesitantly at a closed door where the singing was the loudest, the voice jumping off and down in strange intervals.

Without knocking, Felix stepped inside to the sprawling library. It was a huge room, even rivaling the libraries of Cainhurst when he was young, with walls and walls filled with nothing but books—piles stacked and fallen over around the floor as well. In the middle of the room was a twisting black staircase that went up onto the dim darkness, where another floor laid.

“ _The ancient queen wading in the water, a cruel, loving moon of white, hides away the horrors and gives us sleep, gives us ignorance…”_

The song came upstairs, traveling and twirling around in an audible little dance as signaled by the bouncing footsteps that sounded just right on the floor over his head. Slowly, the hunter climbed up the stairs, his head turned upward to capture the glimpse of the mysterious siren. There was hardly any light upstairs; even all the windows were shut and veiled by a heavy curtain so none of the moonlight came through.

“ _Oh, child of the Great Ones; sweet, sweet infant of Oedon—sleep tight for they will never find thee…”_

Felix always assumed that he would get used to it by now—just staring into the darkness for long periods. And yet, for some reasons, his eyes strained in the dimness and he rubbed his eyes with a groan.

Then there was a flicker.

At the very corner of the upper level, the walls slanted inward to a secret pathway, a warm lit flickered—a flame. The singing was the strongest there, the siren standing just a few feet away in the light.

Felix slowly crept over, his hand instinctively placed firmly at the hilt of his blade. He stayed close to the bookshelf as he eyed the light and walked around the corner, coming into full view of—

“ _A lullaby for thee is all I have to offer—a gentle slumber, awakened by a pale-faced hunter_ — _”_

A scream—from who, neither of them knew. Annette stumbled on the wooden ladder prompted against the bookshelf and fell off. Felix dove in and immediately caught the young woman in his arms. However, the hunter himself staggered a bit from the sudden weight and dropped on his back.

They stayed still like that for what felt like an eternity, with Annette sitting rather on top of Felix as he stared off blankly at the pitch blackness of the high ceiling. Finally, she reached over and touched his face. It was warm and smelled like ash.

“Felix,” She whispered as though she were trying to wake up a child. “Are you dead?”

“Am I in the Hunter’s Dream?”

“No…”

Felix slowly pushed himself, holding onto the young scholar protectively on his lap. A bell was ringing in his head and his back stung faintly, but Annette seemed okay if not a tad bit frazzled. She stood up and helped the hunter onto his feet. In her hands was a black book covered in dust and she clutched it to her heart.

“What in the world were you doing?” She asked indignantly with wide eyes. “You scared me mad!”

“I heard singing and followed it? I should be asking you what you were doing,” Felix grumbled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. The scholar had relit the fire back into her hand, sending the shadows back into the corner of their small space.

Annette’s face lit up beneath the light and revealed the small dark rings beneath her blue eyes. “Thea needed an important book so I went off and looked for it.”

“You could have woken me up, Annette. I was supposed to help.”

“Not for this—Felix, you would have taken days to find this particular volume,” She said with a long sigh. Her blue eyes were cast off to the side and darkened with conflict. “Besides, it seems like you needed rest. You were...dreaming.”

The hunter’s brow arched up curiously and he stepped forward. “You heard something,” He said very carefully, his voice taunt like a string.

“I came in to grab some documents and you kept saying a name. Over and over again. Nothing else.”

“A name…” Felix threw his head down and frowned deeply. He already knew—there can be no other, but the hunter lacked the strength to ask and merely tossed the entire inquiry aside. “Well, I suppose it matters not. I’m awake now and whatever you need to get done, I’ll help out as best as I can.”

Silence. Annette stared at him dully for what left like a minute before looking down and swallowing.

“There’s only one thing left to be done, actually,” She stated directly, and stared at the black tome in her hands before reluctantly handing it off to Felix. The title was covered in a thick layer of dried dust and old stains, but the title was enough to stop the hunter’s heart for just a single beat.

“This is…”

“In the kitchen. Go grab a piece of cake I just baked—Thea likes to eat while she studies,” Annette advised with a small smile and stood up, her back turned as if to deny Felix any more conversation.

The scholar stepped back into the darkness and went away in search of something else on her mind; Felix stayed glued to the floor, burgundy eyes still on the book, before slowly lifting himself up. In the far darkness, Annette began to sing again, but her cheery voice had taken on a darker, more solemn tone—a God’s foreign tongue, and it rousted something fearful within the hunter.

“ _Farewell, my love, farewell. For when the blood moon comes, the dream will end, and I will lose thee in the morning sunrise…”_

**Byrgenwerth - Lysithea’s Study**

Felix felt like a trespasser to knock on the Wisdom’s cold door frame once more. At the very least, he was equipped well with weaponry in case the pale-haired dragon flared up at him again: a forbidden book in one hand and a slice of angel cake in the other.

Hopefully, this would be the end of her sworn silence and she will finally betray Dimitri’s location… though Felix knew now where his partner was. The moment Annette handed him the book, all wonder and theory fell out the window to something akin to bitter betrayal, which had nearly devoured him at that very moment. 

The hunter stared down sharply at the large volume as though it had struck him, his fists clenched around the spine tightly, hoping it would snap. Lysithea and Annette must have known as well, with the latter probably discovering it once she found the damn thing in the library.

However, Felix understood that he still needed to play the reluctant courteous house guest for the _way_ to Dimitri was still a grave mystery. The only thing now was to ask the lady of wisdom herself.

Inside the study was a surprise that almost caught him off guard: Lysithea’s wheelchair was turned around so she was facing the door, a greeting in a strange way. However, her face—half shielded by shadow and moonlight, was lulled down against her chest, and she was staring off to the side with a distinctively dullness in her gaze. 

It was not until he drew closer that the hunter stopped, white-faced; the top of her dress was stained in blood and her mouth was red.

Felix almost dropped everything and rushed it over was it not for Lysithea lifting her hand out and muttering very softly: “Don’t you dare let that cake touch the floor.”

The young woman coughed wetly into her sleeve and lifted her head up, red eyes glazing over in a mixture of both irritation and fatigue at Felix who merely watched from afar. She gruffly gestured to the empty seat on the other side of her tea table before shifting her chair around to the window—as though nothing had ever happened.

Felix, the quiet observant hunter, said absolutely nothing to this odd behavior though the biting words were caught in his mouth. Instead, he placed the slice of cake down her side along with the book and sat down, subdued.

Lysithea dabbed her mouth dry, heaving a bit, and glanced down to her table. For a moment, her expression softened, preferably at the pastry as Felix had been anticipating. But then she saw the large, dusty tome sitting right next to the plate and the great scholar’s face scrunched up a bit like she had caught an unwanted smell.

“So you know,” Lysithea said simply and picked up her cake for feasting, digging right into the white frosting with one pale finger.

“Yahar'gul,” Felix said bitterly with a sharp hiss. He closed his eyes, trying to dispel the horrid sensations of a migraine approaching and rubbed circles around in his temple. “Why...why the fuck did he go there? That village was destroyed years ago.”

“Yes, by the School of Mensis. You know of them, I assume?”

“Dimitri’s friend, Edelgard, is a scholar there. He hasn’t shut up about her since we were kids.”

“ _Was_ a scholar,” Lysithea corrected nonchalantly while taking in a spoonful of cake.

She never once turned around to see Felix’s paling, sickly expression. His hands cracked when he clenched against the arm rest and he leaned forward with an intense glance. The Wisdom liked to speak patiently and in semi-riddles, which irritated him greatly.

Even now, she had the universe of answers in her head and Felix would still have to be courteous in order to receive her grace. It was literally taking him the world not to stand up and angrily demand for Lysithea to tell him how to reach Dimitri. Instead, the hunter sighed through his gritted teeth and counted to three.

“Dimitri was here—he came to you because you...knew what happened with her. How? Why?”

“One question at a time,” Lysithea warned and dabbed her mouth. “Yes, Dimitri was here because he was asking about her. But the answer is more complicated, perhaps even more so for your mind.”

“Tell me,” Felix demanded tightly.

The scholar grimaced but nonetheless, nodded resignedly. She put down her cake and finally met with the hunter’s cold gaze with an intensity of her own. Her long, white fingers methodically rapped against the table, the motion reminding Felix of that of a spider considering what lay unbidden in her web.

“How much do you know about the School of Mensis?” She eventually asked.

Felix frowned. “Not much, only what Dimitri told me. They...used to work with the Healing Church and conducted terrible experiments in Yahar'gul—trying to rebuild God or some shit.”

Lysithea nodded. “See, the school used to be partners with the Choir—the elite council of the Healing Church. The Healing Church, tragically, was created by Byrgenwerth scholars. So the Choir was made by my very own peers from this very place.”

“Which means…”

“That we’re not so different. The school did perform inhumane experiments on villagers and they were allied with scholars who already had access with forbidden artifacts of an ancient race and the Old Blood, which healed all afflictions. This college, too, indulged in...dangerous affairs,” Lysithea touched the ends of her silver hair and stared at it.

It was a very fleeting and brief moment, so quickly passing that Felix almost missed it had not been for how closely he had been staring at her; the young scholar’s pale blood eyes glistened softly with the threat of tears, but it never came. Finally, she peered up and hardened as though it never happened.

“I suppose it would be an understatement to say that experimentation was the popular trend in the past years. But the School of Mensis went too far. So much so that both Byrgenwerth and the Healing Church cut off ties with that organization. But perhaps we should have kept an eye on them—we never could have expected that they would condemn an entire village for their aspirations or kidnap people from above,” Lysithea bemoaned harshly and shook her head.

“But what does that have to do with Edelgard?” Felix asked.

“It was quite some time ago, that the school felt silent. And I mean completely and utterly silent. Not a word. Nothing. I actually felt their disappearance when it happened...along with their victory. All these years of trying to build their own god to match the Great Ones, and...they did.”

The hunter frowned, his mind burning his lack of comprehension. Despite the fact that Lysithea was being more direct this time, it was still difficult to follow her. “So they actually built God? How in the world did they do that?”

Lysithea gave Felix a chilling smile and wrapped her moonlit locks around a slender finger, wrapping around and around like a pure silk. “Do you dream of her, Felix? The silver maiden in the moon?”

“I…” He choked and could only stare at the scholar as she nodded in approval.

“I see her too. She has been sleeping for a very long time. I don’t need to tell you anymore that the silver maiden is a new Great One, not born like the others, but created. Man-made from the sacrifices of the School of Mensis. And to create that Great One, they used,”

“Edelgard.”

“This one sees now,” Lysithea chuckled rather sardonically. “But his eyes are yet to be opened.”

Felix shook his head and utterly disbelief and fell back into his chair. His head was swimming, intoxicated and hot, with the words bubbling violently at the surface. The hunter held his head and groaned, never realizing that Lysithea had reached over and touched his arm in a rare show of sympathy.

“Dimitri knew she had gone missing—he dreamed of her too. In the end, I told him what I concluded: the school never left Yahar'gul for it was always the base of their operations. In the end, that was where they turned Edelgard into a God.”

“How do I get to Yahar'gul?” Felix shuddered darkly, his gloved hands clenched with the tension of rubber pulling together.

The room was hot; everything was swelling and humid; the hunter’s own breathing was moving in slow, herculean waves. And the only thing on his mind was the golden-haired hunter with eyes as cold as a winter sky. His name scorching off the tip of the tongue like a terrible obscenity.

“Well, that’s the hard part,” Lysithea said with a sigh. “Remember when I asked you earlier, about what you thought about Dimitri’s ability to see things that you believe aren’t there? Would it be so hard to believe that, maybe, he was seeing the true face of the world?”

The hunter scowled at her, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m surprised that in a world of beasts, mad men, white giants, and even creatures with snakes for heads, you don’t believe that your partner could do other things not in plain sight?” Lysithea clicked her tongue at him.

“Dimitri claimed that actual, living Gods were all around us, ever since we were kids. And now you’re telling me that his invisible ‘Gods’ are actually real?” Felix snapped with an irritable bite.

Lysithea waved her hand around dismissively. “They’ve always been real. You’re just too blind to see them. Your eyes have yet to be opened. Your sanity… blinds you. But we’re going to change that, once and for all, for everyone.” She gestured to the window, where the colorless lake glowed beneath the radiance of the low, gentle moon.

It was bizarre, truly, how the waters neither rippled or wavered but stayed incredibly still almost like a thin, translucent layer of ice. And yet, he could see absolutely nothing but a threatening, white murkiness beneath its surface, unable to gauge how shallow or deep the lake was. Felix, however, understood one thing very clearly: _something_ in the water had been singing to him. Ever since he had arrived at Byrgenwerth, the damned lake had been nothing more but a detestable siren. He had hoped to ask Annette about it but he felt shy of coming off as outlandish.

“The secret lies in the lake,” Lysithea said warily. “Byrgenwerth’s greatest success lives below its depths, a creature that shields humankind from the true facade of the world. She is the barrier that holds the curtain of ignorance up and prevents people like you from truly seeing the Great Ones.”

“Who?”

“Rom.” Lysithea stated darkly. “She...used to be a scholar here until she had undergone experimentation to become a Great One like Edelgard. And she almost did...but not at the same time? It was not as successful as Edelgard’s experiment but Rom was stuck in the middle. Now she sits at the bottom of the lake and safeguards the illusion of this world.” The scholar turned to Felix and nodded solemnly towards the water outside. “Kill her, allow reality’s mask to drop, and the way to the unseen village, Yahar'gul, will be revealed to you.”

“I don’t quite understand,” Felix started tightly with his throat burning with every word. “Is there not a normal way to get to Yahar'gul? And how in the world can Dimitri see things and someone like me cannot?”

“Yahar'gul belongs somewhere far away and detached than here. You will not reach it by any traditional means. And as for your beloved partner’s sight,” Lysithea clicked her tongue spitefully and turned back to the window. “Well, you know what they say about madmen—they live in their own world. And unfortunately, their world has always been our world. Always.”

Felix stayed very still in his seat, eerily silent and white like absolute death. Whatever was going on in his mind was terrifying to the extreme. If he moved in this moment, allowing Lysithea to catch the shakiness in his sunset eyes, it would immediately replace his senses with that of a child’s—absolute, screeching, desperate agony, wanton for the need to hold on and never let go.

A boy discovering the painful truth of ‘death’ when his beloved dog falls ills: Felix was crying inside for a truth that was too unbearable to accept. That all of Dimitri’s Gods had been here this entire time, waiting and watching, careening slowly down a realm that was merely a playground for them. The hunt and the plague, which had terrorized Yharnam for years, no longer seemed that much of a threat.

“I...I-I don’t know if this is possible…” Felix said, the stutter of his voice betraying the fear choking at the base of his throat. “This is too much. I can’t...I just fucking want Dimitri back. I’m not trying to, to peel back the skin of the universe or something.”

“Believe me: You’ll get used to it,” Lysithea said, not unkindly, with an eye roll. She ate another spoonful of cake with her eyes closed, savoring the flavor serenely as Felix began to combust and roil.

“I’ve been getting ‘used’ to things since I arrived in this accursed land! The fucking beasts, the moon, the rude villagers, even the monsters with eyes and teeth in all the wrong places! Now you’re telling me that I’ll get ‘used’ to seeing this world breakdown around me?”

The scholar put down the plate and wiped her mouth clean daintily. “Felix, do you love Dimitri?”

Her question had the hunter’s vicious ire drying up in his throat. “I…”

“I can tell _that_ word gets tied up in your mouth a lot. You seem to be that selfishly mute,” Lysithea remarked sullenly. “Well, I hope you told him of your devotion at some point because knowing what has happened in Yahar'gul—you will never see him again. Dimitri will go mad and die in the village he once escaped from, never to dream again.”

The young scholar smiled, the shearing tips of a knife split ruefully at the edges of her pale lips: a cruel and pitiful smile for a weak man. A touch of red at the corners from a blood unseen. “I’m sorry you came all the way here just for me to tell you that Dimitri will die. But if it makes you feel any better…”

Lysithea touched Felix’s cold hand, revealing the sly performer in a frail, sickly body. “He told me that he loved you dearly. As a worshiper to a God. Shame his God is like many others—unresponsive to prayer.”

“I don’t—”

“I grow weary speaking with you, Felix,” Lysithea stated with finality and a hand wave. “Go, fetch my Annie so I can kiss and tell her that I love her. In this hostile world of ours, I would like to be with someone precious as much as I can.”

A helpless tremor of mourning had seized the hunter and he was unable to say another word. His body was emitting novel sensations, not of its own. A deep and bottomless alienation from the space of the study and his heart, floating upward into space until he can no longer see the light. Until all images of Dimitri went blank in his mind and the voice of sleepy love dissipated, replaced with a yearning for recollection. But he could not remember.

Finally, after a minute where Lysithea began to violently cough into her handkerchief, Felix stood up mechanically and stumbled out the room in search of Annette without any occupying thought.

It was all numbness and the pain of loss. 

**Byrgenwerth**

Byrgenwerth was a terribly lonely place to live, but perhaps Felix only thought that because he had been alone for a very long time.

Even now, he had not been close with anyone for what felt like an entire year. Even now, he couldn’t be sure how long he’d even been in Byrgenwerth. Perhaps it was exaggerated, but time was hardly a concept here or in the Hunt. Images of his own friends and neighbors being the only thing that kept him from breaking down, that and Dimitri.

Annette and Lysithea made strange company. The girls naturally found comfort between each other’s laced fingers in the silence of the dark college over the brooding hunter. They studied and ate together with Annette always welcoming Felix to join them, but he would merely shake his head and retreat back to her study, which had doubled to become his own of sorts in the time he had been here.

Annette came around every often to check up on Felix who had begun to wander aimlessly around the college in deep thought; she accompanied him on long walks around the courtyard and spoke very softly to him during solitary moments where he stared down at the colorless lake.

The scholar’s words were always blurring between the line of gentle encouragement and sympathy, never once provocative; her partner, on the other hand, had grown more irritable since Felix last spoke with her and was blunt and growing blunter in all manners of speech.

In the end, Felix could only continue pacing around room to room, wandering closely to the lake and gazing down into that murky, beckoning abyss that called out to him so sweetly. It was getting impatient; Lysithea was getting impatient, and Felix failed to read the air.

But he already knew: there was no time left. The lake’s song was growing increasingly desperate, a wailing, like a wounded cry of help. Dimitri was out there, and he was waiting. But for how long?

How long would Dimitri wait for him?

In the hunter’s spare time, he quietly looked through the Yahar'gul tome Annette had retrieved, which turned out to be a book of experimentation reports written by a scholar from the school of Mensis.

Most of the reports had been destroyed from misuse and age, with many pages burnt or ripped out. What was leftover was appalling, heart wrenching information on the types of experiments conducted on the villagers—most dying from shock, turned to demented, alien-like creatures, or simply became hollow husks. They spanned years with name after name of those slain in the pursuit of forbidden knowledge. None were successful—that much was bitterly evident.

As he flipped through the preserved pages, there was one name that caught him so off guard he nearly fell off the lounge chair. The hunter steadied himself against the rest and threw his eyes closer to a pair of names scribbled nonchalantly below _‘potential subjects’._

_Lambert E. Blaiddyd (32) - Constable_

_Dimitri A. Blaiddyd (12) - Son_

Felix’s gaze continued to wander closely, pupils dilating with each striking word and paragraph, his heart racing with revelation.

“ _Both are incredibly healthy and sport a vigorous strength unknown to most subjects. Constable Blaiddyd is a constant source of irritation—he is quickly catching on to our goings about here. Deal with him first: if failed compatibility with current project, ashen blood fusion necessary for beast transformation. Extra notes down below...”_

Transformed? Felix thought Dimitri’s father had died in the experimentation yet the notes had betrayed something close to a worse fate. The hunter held his breath and clasped his hand over his mouth upon a dangerous thought. He continued reading.

“ _Constable Blaiddyd's only child is a boy the age of twelve. He appears physically weak and delicate but exhibits an unnatural strength like his father. Very close with our Edelgard. After dealing with Lambert, consider Dimitri a secondary option for our main project. Should we wait until he’s older? More notes down below...”_

So they were tracking Dimitri as well. Felix, of course, already knew this though it was painful to see the confirmation. A twelve-year-old child caught in a twisted game of scientific ambition with everyone around him disappearing one by one. Even his own father, without a trace.

In that moment, Felix, who never really appreciated Edelgard’s unseen presence in Dimitri’s life, had suddenly grown incredibly grateful to the young woman for her role in helping him escape. While he never ever met her and only picked up what she was like through small tidbits of Dimitri’s constant gushing.

And then Felix saw it. And he stopped, only from the clear and apparent confusion that washed over him. In the last few pages—which was marked at the corner—was a highlighted section labeled _‘special’_ beneath was a set of names he did not recognize until he saw hers.

_Ionius von Hresvelg (52) - Director of Reborn Program (deceased)_

_Anselma von Hresvelg (35) - Head Scholar of Reborn Program (deceased)_

_Edelgard von Hresvelg (12) – Youngest daughter_

Ten other names followed Edelgard’s—most likely her siblings considering the closer ages and shared surname. Eleven children in total. Two dead parents who were apparently members of the school of Mensis.

Eleven children.

Felix felt himself frowning as an aching dread crept up his spine. Why was her entire family listed here in the experimentation reports when they all worked for the school? None of this made any sense to him and the implication worsened when he saw the notes down below.

“ _With the passing of Anselma this month, she left the care of her children to the school. They are studious, dutiful, and very keen on advancing research for our project. Many of them, especially the youngest, Edelgard, remind me much of the late director. They are a family unified in doing all they can to assist with our operations. What should be noted of great importance is the children’s conventional compatibility with the project. Surely, the late director himself can understand if there should be some future necessity to—”_

Felix shut the book loudly and flung at the far end of the wall, where it fell with a loud thud. The room grew eerily silent like a once jovial party turned ugly with rising argumentation. In the mute darkness, with just the hum of the lake outside, his breathing came out frenzied and harsh.

Felix wiped the sweat from his tight brow and stared disdainfully at the experimentation report, teeth gritted and a hot violence surging at his fingertips. In the end, the only thing he could do was collapse completely on the lounge chair and stare up to the dark ceiling, taking short, controlled breaths, bloodletting the rage in him little by little.

The hunter had heard this story too many times, of what had occurred in the accursed village. But a mixture of both apathy and inexperience had softened any blows of empathy that washed over him, even concerning Dimitri. Now the only thing Felix could experience was a raw anger with no one to take it out on, and the weight of forbidden, terrible knowledge—that Yahar'gul was an unholy, vile plane, perhaps worse than anything Felix had ever seen or heard before in his life. What he had read even outclassed the Forbidden Wood’s reputation in his mind.

And then there was that disgusting lake calling out to him with a rising impatience.

Nothing mattered anymore: the hunt, the beast scourge, the state of Yharnam, the destruction of Old Yharnam, the remnants of Cainhurst, the corpse of the Healing Church—there was no weight to it anymore, when the truth had never been clearer to him.

It all began here with the hubris of scholars venturing into places not their own, taking artifacts that should have been left behind, ambitions that never should have been indulged. Felix, Annette, Lysithea, and even Dimitri were only here because of those who had come before taking that which did not belong to them.

Knowledge, itself, was heavier than anything Felix had ever carried. Perhaps all these years, he worked to stay willfully stoic of the people and things happening around him: He never thought to ask Sylvain or Ingrid any more on their pasts unless they were absolutely insistent; he never questioned the hunt or the source of the scourge, merely content in the act of killing with a principled silence; the growing madness among the last remnants of Yharnamites hiding out at Oedon Chapel was never of great concern to him—as long as they were sane enough to keep safe, then that was all that mattered.

He intentionally kept himself blind; Dimitri, on the other hand, had come to him mad and acquainted intimately at the skeleton of a rotting world. Felix did not know how exactly he was supposed to feel. 

He sat and watched the darkness, watched the door of Annette’s study with an expectation for someone who will never walk through.

How long had he been waiting? How long was he willing to let the curtain of his mind shield the moonlight? And the true question that haunted him in that forlorn, bitter some hour terrorized the hunter right up to where fatigue crept up into his low eyes and outward peacefully:

Was he willing to let Dimitri go for the preservation of ignorant sanity?

_🌘_ **_Waning Crescent_ ** _🌘_

_Water was dripping down from the Grand Cathedral’s exposed ceiling from last night’s rainstorm. The destroyed vaults on the roof shown through the eerie moon above as rain droplets fell and rippled into the puddles around the desecrated altar. Small noises of echoing pulses from water_

_Felix stood right in the middle of the empty Cathedral, the hunter’s ebony feathers bristled from a shallow breeze mirrored in the puddles below his feet; he stayed still—waiting—and gazed up dully at the silver of the glowing moonlight as its rays loomed through the roof and lit up the altar below._

_The crows were screeching again tonight. They have been for the past nights. Something was disturbing them, more so than a beast or man. The cluster of small, black feathers drifted down from a sudden, crowded take-off and floated delicately like little boats in the shallow water._

_Felix was still waiting._

_A night like this in Cathedral Ward was quite typical. Outside, the old church servants—strange, malevolent beings with chilling white faces and smoldering black eyes- stalked the streets with their luminescent lanterns; the church giants, hulking masses with great axes, staggered slowly through the mist, their gargantuan shadows sliding forebodingly through the broken remains of windows._

_Felix remembered with a bitter taste in his mouth, that these ambitions were servants to the Healing Church for different purposes—all dearly unpleasant. And now, all they do is seek and slaughter. But none of them would dare cross inside the Grand Cathedral as though their old masters were still here, a dog to await outside the house._

_The hunter’s ears stung from hearing the clacking of their boots against the cobblestone right outside the doors._

_Nearby, down the stairs and around the corner was Oedon Chapel, where the last remnants of Yharnam gathered around in the safety of holy incense. The chapel keeper, Mercedes, was always there to tend to the weak, sick, and mad through the long hours of the hunt. And she was there now, with Dimitri._

_The White Lion had been left there hours ago in the care of the kind maiden by Felix himself before he went off to hunt alone. It was not a decision that came upon him suddenly, rather the growing concern built up ever since Dimitri began to wake repeatedly from his sleep, hour after hour, screaming._

_Felix was not sure when it began: perhaps that first night where his partner had dreamed of Edelgard. After that, each night was more grueling and terrifying than the next with no relief in sight. Most nights, Dimitri’s incoherent muttering turned inward into an escalating, blood-curdling scream—a drowned name wrenched out from his throat as he thrashed wildly against the flowers._

_Felix was always the one to wake up and hold him down; Ingrid and Sylvain were second. After that, the three of the hunters stayed up and watched Dimitri carefully, with Felix sometimes finding himself staying up in the early hours when the air chilled with morning mist._

_The more calming nights were when Dimitri did not stir, but still begged wretchedly through his restless slumber. He called for Edelgard most of the time, her name hissing between gritted teeth and white, clenched fists. Sometimes, he called for his father, his mother. Invisible ghosts Felix had no way to repel for the hunter only knew how to kill living, breathing, hungry beasts. Not phantoms blind to the eye._

_The only thing he could do was hold the man’s hand tightly and whisper softly as if his word could possibly reach out to him. But all the hunters agreed that these nights were more manageable than most, though it hardly lessened their panic. Felix, himself, was a terrible mess every morning and Dimitri had long known that he was the cause of the trouble._

_But the other man pressed his partner about sleeping outside the Hunter’s Dream to avoid disrupting everyone, Felix grew uneasy, vicious, and disparaged that Dimitri would even suggest such a thing. The suffocating silence that followed was enough to deter the large hunter from asking again._

_Then, there was the incident last night. The reason that pushed Felix to drag Dimitri out to seek Mercedes’ aid. It had not been such a typical night: Dimitri did not wake up screaming like most of the time or even laid there, muttering to the haunting demons in his dreams. The hunter, for once in his life, was sleeping very silently. He did not move. He did not speak. And for a minute, Felix thought that he was not breathing, as though Dimitri was a corpse. Felix, out of habit, watched the man for some time before settling down beside him and falling asleep._

_Felix was not sure how long he slept. Two hours? Three? Sometime in the night, the hunter subconsciously felt a stark coldness beside him and stirred from his dreamless slumber to find Dimitri gone. He blinked at the spot where the man once laid and prompted himself up._

_That’s when Felix felt it, the looming shadow that shaded over him. Hesitantly, he peered up to his other side and looked upon the figure of Dimitri. The large man stood over him, swaying left to right like an uprooted tree caught in a wind; his cold, blue eyes centered directly at Felix, his expression was slack without feeling, and even his entire body appeared taut and stiff. Both men watched each other, one so suddenly filled with gradual fear and the other stoically cold._

_And then Felix saw the rifle spear in Dimitri’s hand._

_“...Dimitri?”_

_When Dimitri did not respond to Felix’s soft call, the hunter slowly reached over and touched his partner’s arm. There was a moment of limbo: a fluid, ethereal pause from one reaction to another, before Dimitri blinked and the fog in his eyes disappeared. Then came a raw consciousness as he dropped his weapon to the flowers and staggered back like awakening from a terrifying dream. Dimitri’s voice returned, this groggy, pained sound, and he looked around like a child lost._

_Once everyone arose for another hunt, Felix immediately dragged Dimitri to the chapel. He was not so sure what dear Mercedes could do with night terrors and sleepwalking, but it was better than leaving this alone. When the man’s hunt ended for the night, Mercedes had informed him that Dimitri had fallen asleep after a long and troubled session._

_So here Felix stood in the Grand Cathedral, staring up at a moon whose constant presence irritated him and by an altar of a dead God. The skull of the first vicar was laying atop, a reminder of the inherent failure of faith. He always came here—not to pray for he was not a pious man nor acknowledged any Gods but the one sleeping in the chapel below, but because it was the only place of solitude. No one liked to come here anymore so Felix made it his personal sanctuary._

_As the hunter relaxed in the cool silence of the cathedral, he caught a sound. Felix could not see from where he stood, but down the giant staircase that led to the great doors, came a set of slow and sluggish footsteps._

_Almost instinctively, his hand went to Chikage’s hilt and he pulled the sword up a bit, straining his ears to the invader’s sounds. At first, he thought it was one of the church servants who finally proved themselves to enter the Cathedral. But the distinctive stab of their canes against the stone was nowhere to be heard, just a heavy foot and the soft clacking of metal._

_Finally, a figure emerged from the bottom of the stairs to the altar room and Felix’s hand relaxed to his side in relief._

_“By the Great Ones, Dimitri, you scared me,” The hunter sighed and shook his head. “Never mind that. How was your session with Mercedes?”_

_“Lovely…” Was all Dimitri uttered, though the letters ran together in his muttering, odd and slurred._

_To Felix’s confusion, his partner stayed right at the edge of the stairs and stared across the entire floor to him. And even from here, he sensed an off, unwell state to the man—something was not right._

_Dimitri’s figure was shielded by the pale darkness on the other side of the cathedral, the only thing that peered through clearly and concisely like a knife was a pair of blue eyes. Cold, biting blue eyes like that of a dark frozen lake. They arrested Felix’s gaze and held him pinned to place before the altar; he could not move, paralyzed by a predator’s unwavering stare, and Dimitri began to slink forward._

_Felix swallowed and clenched his hands together. “...Did she help with your nightmares at all?” he asked in a hard voice._

_“Yes.” A chilled, disassembled voice replied. Dimitri stopped right before where the moonlight struck Felix in a cool glow. The puddles around the hunters rippled with an oppressive tension, obscuring and deforming reflections. The large man’s lips curved upward to his cold eyes—canines, once small, endearing fangs of a cub were now long and sharp with age, enough to completely tear out a jugular from the neck—a lion._

_“What did she tell you?” Felix continued, trying to steady his voice from choking._

_“That I should spend time with loved ones.That their presence might yet help ease my burdens.”_

_A gloved hand reached out and passed over into the realm of the moonlight. Long, black fingers gently caressed Felix’s bloodied cheek, a strong thumb lovingly pressed between the man’s pink, flushed lips; Felix could taste foreign blood on the glove, the metallic sensation numbing his entire tongue. He breathed through his nose and stared wide-eyed at the stranger who wore his lover’s face._

_The air in the cathedral had become that of water. An ocean pressed down against Felix. His ears were roaring, lungs choking on the thick salt of a violent storm. He stood motionless, eyes washed over, moving up and down to catch a sight of land. Finally, after a minute, Felix’s strength gave out and he broke into a small, soundless sob._

_“Why are you crying, Felix?” The stranger in front of him cooed sweetly, his thumb brushing the tears from the hunter’s blinking eyes._

_“You…” Felix hissed through his teeth. “What the fuck is happening with you?”_

_A head tilt; a sleepy, far away smile.“What do you mean? I’ve returned to you, don’t you see?”_

_“No, no, something’s changed. You’re not yourself, Dimitri.”_

_“I wouldn’t say that. I came here to be with you, didn’t I?” The man whispered and stepped forward until his face was illuminated in the moonlight._

_A madman’s stare, looking through Felix rather than at him. A slit smile and eyes clouded with a mixture of grief and madness. His other hand went up and immediately went to the other side of Felix’s face, forcing the hunter to look straight ahead and directly at him._

_“The dreams…?” Felix said softly as he slowly drowned in Dimitri’s gentle grip._

_“I’m all better...I know what to do now.”_

_“What...what does that mean, Dimitri?”_

_Instead of an answer, his grin widened and he embraced Felix into a tight, suffocating hug; the darkness seeped into the Cathedral from the absence of the moon behind the clouds, and engulfed them both._

_Felix breathed harshly into Dimitri’s chest, his arms— not inconsiderable in strength but weak against his lion’s might- haplessly attempting to push the stronger body away. His partner’s vice around him stayed locked; above, he buried his face into Felix’s long, dark hair—fingers wrapped around at the ends possessively._

_“I love you,” Dimitri confessed, almost breaking through the madness for a ghost of a moment. He chuckled darkly and breathed in the other man’s scent. “I love you so much.”_

_“Dimitri. Please. Let me go.”_

_“But you could disappear from me. What if you, too, are simply part of this dream?”_

_“Let me go and find out.”_

_“Do you love me, Felix?”_

_The other hunter swallowed down his fear as the familiar pang of affection overtook his heart. Felix closed his eyes and tried to think of the Hunter’s Dream; the safety of the flowers, the warmth of the old workshop. If he could bring Dimitri away from here and back there, everything would be okay. Sylvain and Ingrid would probably help pacify whatever darkness was lurking in—_

_Dimitri’s arms tightened and there was a strangled noise buried in Felix’s hair. Crying? The hunter sighed into the tight breast that suffocated him and wrapped his arms around the other man’s muscular waist._

_“I love you,” Felix breathed out and felt the stone shoulders of the larger body sag._

_And for a moment, Felix thought he might have finally found the eye of the storm._

_Then,_

_“Thank you for lying,” Dimitri said in a broken, laughing voice._

_“I’m not lying—”_

_Dimitri silenced Felix with a hungry kiss, the moment’s peace shattered as the winds came back full force. There was clear and painful anguish on the other hunter’s face, the skin beneath his shut eyes glistened wetly as he crushed his lover within his grip, teeth and tongue buffeting Felix in the frantic embrace; Felix tried to pull back and say something, but Dimitri’s brutal grip at his hips kept him in place._

_They stayed, locked in the tempest, for just a minute before Dimitri finally pulled away and stared at him with sick, blinded eyes, as though he were staring up at the untouchable heavens. Felix knew he wasn’t looking at him, but something else entirely—something that didn’t exist._

_He ran his hand through the man’s long hair and bent over to whisper in his ear as though there were others around to listen._

_“I want to feel you.”_

_A shiver ran up Felix’s spine. He knew what he meant. Dimitri was hardly ever so eloquent with his requests—it almost sounded like the first time he asked: this eighteen-year-old boy stumbling over his clearly rehearsed speech with a red face as Felix looked on flushed, agawk, simultaneously humiliated and hopelessly smitten._

_But there existed a very persistent and terrible despair behind the man’s words. His hands were quivering slightly and everything washed over in a painfully cold sweat._

_Before he could reply, Felix was snatched up as though he weighed nothing and flung against the clustered altar. Powerful, killing hands tore his clothes open—his coat forced apart with belts and straps snapping audibly across the cathedral. His undershirt was ripped apart carelessly and his chest shivered with the meeting of the cold air, smothered with incense._

_Dimitri’s mouth immediately fell upon the muscled front as his other hand trailed down and pulled Felix’s pants away- only to mid-thigh where his gaiters prevented their descent any further. But it was more than enough, exposing him, all his softest parts to this ravenging beast._

_Pleasure was already swirling darkly down below and Felix groaned as he felt a gloved hand wrap around his excited length._

_“Dimitri...your glove…”_

_Annoyed, the man brought his hand back up, bit into the leather and ripped it out of his grip before returning to reclaim his partner’s cock. The calluses of his fingertips were as rough as sandpaper, an even worse intensity than black leather, but one Felix was familiar with, and he was helpless to do anything but whine satisfaction into his arm._

_“Do not worry, I’ll open you, I’ll fill you up…” Dimitri muttered, licking his lips as he stared down at Felix’s white chest. “I’ll give you what you need.”_

_His other hand, still gloved, reached down to the man’s entrance. Felix allowed both his legs to be rearranged atop the altar, his head prompted up against the first vicar’s skull as he shut his eyes with a strangled hiss as Dimitri cocked his head back before spitting on him, once then twice, the sudden shock of heat both on his skin and within igniting him- and then the first leather finger entered._

_Pain sheared up his spine in a cutting, vibrant spark. No matter how many times they’d done this, Felix never really adjusted to it- blown out by sensation, by exposure, by closeness. Sylvain once joked that he was lucky to be blessed with a lover with a snake-like grip—which Felix immediately slapped him for. But even now, Dimitri’s fingers were working dutifully to sink all the way in. He spat on them again, and then he entered the second and Felix gasped, high and loud._

_Meanwhile, Dimitri began to stroke his lover’s length with a tight viciousness, laughing hollowly as he bent over and licked the long hollow of his bared neck. His fangs teased the skin with a possessive thought, long fingers coiled around the cock within his grasp, slathering it with the evidence of Felix’s compliance spilling from him faithfully; a third finger slipped in and thrusted deeply until they probed that spot within that made him scream._

_The hunter trembled with a soundless cry and began to shake, those fingers pressing up roughly into that part of his guts, reaching to take him for everything he was, everything he had; Dimitri lifted his gaze to look upon Felix, mesmerized by the slender man’s hips and the milk-white of his thighs, wrapped around his waist in an iron vice._

_And the only thing the poor man could look back upon was the visage of a bestial hunger in the form of a blue-eyed, golden haired prince—hardly a prince and more of a delusional king without a court, without a country, gazing down eerily down into an abyss._

_A king of naught but beasts._

_Felix felt himself physically tightening with the intensifying thrust of the beast’s large fingers, body relishing the stretch and pull with a shaking, hungry pleasure as he momentarily saw flashing stars, Dimitri still stroking feverishly the hunter’s length, twitching impatiently._

_“They’re here…they’re everywhere…,” He bemoaned hotly into Felix’s neck as he licked and nibbled the skin. His touch was all-consuming, it was everything, everywhere, all Felix could feel and all he ever longed to, and yet he still sounded so very far away._

_The other hunter opened his teary eyes momentarily and stared up at the clouds passing through the roof. There was no one here but them, and yet Dimitri had begun to sprout ominously like he has done most nights. A madness in the foggy blue eyes; white noise coming from a fanged mouth._

_Dimitri slowed down and finally pulled his fingers out of the man—slick with saliva and his body, but so thoroughly employed—and left Felix feeling bereft, painfully, completely empty, his body and heart seizing upon nothing. Desperate for something, the want to be taken and consumed with a primal instinct of predator and prey, and he grabbed Dimitri’s arms, hissing._

_“Dimitri, stop teasing me—just get on with it!”_

_The larger man blinked dazedly, and looked up and around him with milky eyes. “But, they’re watching, Felix… They’ll see, they’ll see it all-”_

_“Let them,” Felix drew himself up and into his lover’s space. Ran his hands up his beloved face, tightened his thighs around his waist, drew him in with everything he had, everything he had to offer the beast. “Let them see everything. I am the only one you should be looking at here.”_

_A breathy, humorless laugh; a shake of a head and the large hands gripped Felix’s side harshly, pulling him down. Dimitri’s sight was still disorientated, eyes wandering from Felix’s flushed face over to the exposed part of the ceiling—what could he be looking at?_

_However, Felix never got his answer: his voice got caught up at the pit of his throat in a wet choke when he felt Dimitri’s hardness penetrate him shallowly without warning. He was practically shoved upward all the way when the larger man gave a hard thrust, and Felix groaned as his neck stung from being pushed up against the fallen relics on the altar._

_“D-Dimitri!” He whined into his bitten hand._

_The other man grunted harshly, sweat dripping down from his brow and onto the heaving chest below as he forced himself in—his entire cock sinking deep into Felix’s awaiting body._

_The faint, squeamish noise of bodies shoved together, penetrating, being spread out open; pleasure and pain climbed like a scorching flame from the pit of Felix’s stomach and up his spine. The hunter’s breathing haggard loudly and tears clouded his eyes._

_It was too much for him—it always has been. Dimitri was too big, too sloppy, too rough—now it was all just a violent storm throwing everything together in a chaotic desperation. When Dimitri began to thrust violently with wild abandon, Felix’s barriers broke away to open moaning. The altar shook from the force with cups and plates rattling around them and dropping to the floor._

_The sounds of shattering echoed throughout the cathedral; that of ancient ceramic and clay and glass meeting their demise upon the cold crush of tile; that of the pained, pleasured, shared grunts and the wet sounds of Felix’s body taking in Dimitri’s cock- wet skin against wet skin, the act of sin against the altar of a dead god._

_The man’s pace was punishing, relentless, and did not slow for the shattering one bit: Felix was wholly impaled, split open and remade with each thrust kicking the breath out from his lungs._

_“Look at you—taking me in so well, my beloved...it was as you were made for me,” The man above laughed in a drunken mantra, his thick length pulsing warmly against that sweet hidden spot once more._

_“Ah, ah—by the Great Ones, D-Dimitri!” Felix moaned and arched, feeling a painful wetness drip from the skin. It was too hot, it was too much, but he couldn’t stop it, wouldn’t stop it,_

_Dimitri leaned over and smiled close to his ear. “Why are you calling out to them when I’m right here? Are they the ones taking you like this?” And slammed his hips in, earning a sharp, half-sobbing cry. “You were the one, you were the one who wanted them to see…”_

_Felix’s legs trembled and gave way for Dimitri to hoist them up and against the smaller man’s wet chest for better access. Boots in the air, trousers bunched at his thighs, debauched and so thoroughly taken by this tempest anew, he blinked through hot tears and stared directly at the face of his beloved partner as he was pounded into the altar._

_Dimitri’s face was that of a stranger—neither contorted in pleasure or pain. Merely searching, distant and far away as though he were sedated. Even his eyes seemed colorless and without life._

_Pushing through the storm, Felix forced himself up and threw his arms over Dimitri’s neck, leaning in and capturing his partner’s cold lips in a heated kiss. Dimitri's thrusts slowed momentarily as his hand pressed up at the back of Felix’s back; he kissed back feverishly, chasing after the escalating heat._

_And in that moment, Dimitri’s madness parted away to a semblance of clarity: he pulled away and gazed at Felix with flushed cheeks, panting wildly._

_“L-Let me finish, my love. Let me make you feel good,” He begged with a voice so close to the Dimitri left behind in the innocence of their childhood._

_Felix’s heart soared to shattering heights and he nodded. With this, Dimitri laid his lover back down against the clustered altar and went in relentlessly. Felix lulled his head against the church artifacts as they rattled off the altar and allowed himself to fully feel the rawness of Dimitri’s strength._

_“D-Damn things!” Dimitri grunted wrathfully as a chalice fell and shattered near his foot; something swung over his head in a flash._

_Felix did not notice it. How all of the holy relics were hacked off into pieces and scattered towards the left wall in a golden rain. Pieces of the first vicar’s skull splintered off alongside with flutters of---_

_Long, black hair._

_He hardly noticed any of this for Dimitri threw his rifle spear to the side and went down to kiss Felix’s bleeding lips. A hot tongue lapping at the blood hungrily, with a thirst that cannot be quenched. Felix groaned into the fangs that nibbled at him._

_Dimitri’s returning chuckle filled him with a hot delight; he slid out a little and dove in at full length—Felix threw his head back and_ screamed.

_“Say my name,” Dimitri muttered darkly._

_Felix writhed. “D-Dimitri…”_

_The larger man’s fingers dug deep into his hips and gave a thrust so hard, Felix almost swore he saw the invisible Great One—this many-eyed monstrosity peering intently from the open hole of the cathedral. For a moment, horror nearly overtook him- before Dimitri himself did yet again, growling into his ear._

_“Louder! Let they all hear it! That you’re mine and mine alone—say it!”_

_And the punishing thrust that accompanied the demand drove all sense and shamelessness from him then, everything fading to color and sensation, and nothing but Dimitri, Dimitri-_

_“Dimitri! Dimitri!” Felix choked and moaned but complied, enthusiastic, threw his head back and drowned in the fire that overtook him, claimed him within, and without. “I love you!”_

_Dimittri roared and buried himself so deep within him, every fiber of Felix’s being surging in electric, incandescent sensation as his back arched up, toes curled, and he was helpless but to finally let go._

_Dimly aware of his lover’s releasing cry, his body went slack and he stayed limp on the desecrated altar. His partner collapsed against him, panting wildly with a choking breath._

_They huddled there, coming down from the rictus high, and once the beast had had his fill, he pulled out with the gush of warmth rushing down Felix’s thighs. Dimitri ran a shaking hand between them, the gentle touch to his plundered body twinging something within his hips, and through Felix’s swimming gaze, he saw the fingers come away red and white._

_In the stillness of the Cathedral, the ruined hunter ran his hand up and down Dimitri’s sweaty back as his partner reached over and touched his head._

_“F-Felix...I’m so sorry,” He started, stopped, voice watery and anguished. “I’m so sorry, I think I cut your pretty long hair off.”_

_“That’s alright...I was meaning to cut it anyway. Not good to have anything long in a hunt,” The man managed to reassure with a burning throat._

_Dimitri’s hands wandered from his hair to his face, thumbs tracing tear tracks and he pressed them close, forehead to forehead. “Did you mean it? What you said about loving me?”_

_“I don’t ever lie, Dimitri. You know this.”_

_A silent sob, felt against his chest but more profoundly, his heart._

_“I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”_

_“Shhhh,” Felix hushed and kissed Dimitri’s wet cheek. His partner’s shoulders shook violently and Felix kept tenderly brushing his fingers through the blood-stained golden hair. “It’s okay. Let’s go take a bath. Let’s go home.”_

_“I’m afraid to sleep. She’ll come back again.”_

_“Then I’ll stay up for as long as I need to.”_

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”_

_The apologies kept coming in a frenzied, mad mantra, like a prayer that will never be granted to an unresponsive, deaf God. As Felix gently held the sobbing man, he peered up towards the ceiling and very nearly spotted the pair of tentacles slipping away into the darkness._

* * *

Her eyes opened; a yawn poured out of blood-red lips.

The maiden had awoken.

**Byrgenwerth**

“So, the good hunter has finally decided to show his face—how dutiful, don’t you think Annie? Now them, what have you?”

“I decided to go after Rom. I need your wisdom.”

A rare smile with blood—red lips upon a porcelain face. “Finally, some humility. Yes, come sit and take in our wisdom.”

Lysithea and Annette welcomed Felix to a seat by their table: the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth was settled as ever by the open window, a pile of open books and plates of sweets by her side. Annette also had a book in her hands and was tending to a chemical set rigged in the corner with various liquids dripping into the twisted glass. Felix quietly took a seat across from the girls, a situation that reminded him very faintly of his boyhood having to meet with his tutors after he had been particularly troublesome that day.

But the hunter wasted no time to make his case.

“I have some questions,” Felix said, careful in his tone.

Lysithea gestured with an open palm and flipped through her books, idly showing something to Annette. But Felix knew that she was listening. She was always listening.

The hunter breathed through his nose. “Rom, you mentioned that she was a scholar here before the experiments. Did you know her?”

“Tragically, no. She was before our time here at the college. But I found out about her when I was invited to work with the head scholars,” Lysithea explained plainly.

“We never saw her either since she lives in the realm below the lake—there are pictures though,” Annette added and turned around the book she was reading: a bulbous, grotesquely misshapen spider with hundreds of eyes and an end wrapped in white silk.

“Rom is Byrgenwerth’s ‘success’ story—as close as this college could get to a Great One. But the School of Mensis got there first as we both know. Experimentation brings forth twisted metamorphosis.”

There was a subtle edge to Lysithea’s tone and she even grimaced to herself as though she’d tasted something bitter. Felix watched as she gently touched her hair—silver locks twirled around her pale finger.

“What… exactly did you do with the head scholars here?” Felix asked, ignoring Annette’s silent frantic ‘no’ gesture; Lysithea hummed.

“Research, naturally. I helped them with all the chalices collected from the dungeons. We recorded data on old blood ministration with the Healing Church. And we—”

“All from a wheelchair?”

Annette blew out of her mouth and closed the book in front of her as the white-haired scholar finally peered up. Lysithea was frowning, pale-blood eyes glazing over like rubies, but she hardly seemed upset by Felix’s interruption. Just faintly curious and even her lips thinned out to a self-deprecating smile.

“ _No_ , I wasn’t in a wheelchair. I could walk—even run though not well, at least not as good as my Annie here. And my hair didn’t always look like I was nearly scared to death.”

“Oh, Thea…” Annette cooed, taking the woman’s hand into her own.

Felix nodded knowingly. “Did they force you?”

Lysithea broke into a hollow laugh and squeezed the Annette's hand back. “Would it be so terrible that I volunteered? Mind you, it was not some big project—not like Rom. And, unlike the School of Mensis, Byrgenwerth actually had willing participants,” She explained ruefully and stopped momentarily, gazing out to the far wall with a melancholic look.

“You don’t have to think about it anymore, Thea. It’s the past,” Annette said quietly.

“Of course not, but our inquisitive little friend will be venturing into a cursed place like any other...ruined by man’s ambitions.”

Felix leaned forward, his brow knitted tightly with a fist clenched at his side. “What would I expect at Yahar'gul?”

“Horror. Nothing meant for your eyes or ours. Absolute, gut-wrenching evil,” Lysithea replied rather quickly.

“Would Dimitri still be alive?”

“The hunter who shares the forbidden sight of the Great Ones? Probably. But...I would not count on him still as ‘himself’, especially considering our last meeting.”

Annette turned her head to Felix, blue eyes drawn over in a wistful sort of pity. She clasped her hands together and frowned. “Felix...what if Dimitri is dead?”

“Shameless, Annie—and you say that I must watch _my_ tongue!” Lysithea rebuked kindly with an eye roll. The scholar gently slapped her partner’s arm and shook her head frantically.

“You know what I mean! I’m just worried that Felix is doing all this for nothing…” She explained and curled up a bit shyly.

“Wouldn’t he just wake back up in the Hunter’s Dream?”

“The Dream is bound to sane hunters. If he’s truly gone mad then…” 

Felix stared coldly from across the table, with an expression that was not his, with a voice that belonged to a stranger. “If he is dead in Yahar'gul, then I will retrieve his corpse and bring it back for burning.”

Both Lysithea and Annette winced at the stark coldness in the man’s voice. Even his eyes barely resonated strongly in the darkness—just two dull copper coins glazing weakly in the moonlight.

“Good hunter, what are you planning to do after—if Dimitri is, theoretically, dead?” Lysithea asked carefully.

Felix did not reply; his lips pulled upward to a sharp, embittered smile—his hand rested on Chikage’s hilt.

The scholar turned her red eyes away. “Well then, let us all hope he’s still breathing in the unseen village,” She said quietly.

“Yes, please,” Was all Felix had to say.

The air around them tasted like saltwater and the mirthless lake outside chimed pleasantly like a bell being rung from a far.

Suddenly Lysithea dropped her book; it struck the ground with a thud. The young scholar’s body went slack, eyes so wide and open that Felix could see every line that webbed through and to the dark of his pupils. She opened her mouth and blood sprayed from across the table in a violent cough.

Annette flew up in a cry, her chair crashing to the floor.

“Oh, Thea, no!” The scholar screamed and fell over the hacking woman.

Felix rushed as well upon instinct but could only stand close to Lysithea’s shaking body, his hands—for the first time—utterly useless.

“W-What can I do?” He demanded nervously, petrified on the spot by how white Lysithea’s skin had become on how pure red her blood trailing down from the mouth.

“Help me take her to our room!” Annette ordered frantically and the hunter immediately picked the fragile scholar up in his arms. Even as she coughed in his face and shuddered uncontrollably, he kept his head up and quickly followed Annette out of the study.

Behind them, the moon-lit lake sang of a sweet song of secrecy; it was beckoning.

* * *

Annette had stopped crying by the time Felix brought her some tea from the kitchen.

But she did not drink it; she made a small noise and he placed the mug on the table before joining the sobbing woman at the side of the bed. Tucked under the covers was a small, white figure—breathing hoarsely with small fits of violent coughing.

Annette had laid a wet compress on Lysithea’s forehead and forced some medicine down the woman’s throat, but other than that, there was nothing else she could do. Even from here, it was clear that the aid was temporary with Lysithea’s state hardly improving with the exception of her lungs hacking out with blood. The young woman hugged her knees to her chest and stared out dimly at her partner, blue eyes brimming wetly like stars.

In the quiet space of their room, a old professor’s repurposed quarters, she was clearly trying to console herself from descending into outright hysteria, but was already heaving audibly, in choking tears.

Meanwhile, Felix’s face wore an odd, pained expression. Consolation was an intimate and emotional business, and he was no businessman. And yet, the hunter found himself wrapping a comforting arm around Annette who leaned into the touch naturally. The two watched the bed with a sort of intimacy shared between grieving parents and Felix found his voice.

“I noticed that she was sick some time ago. I came to speak with her one night, and there was dried blood on her dress,” He murmured lowly.

Annette sniffed. “She’s usually so good at hiding it...but things have turned worse as of recent.”

“How long has she been ill?”

“Since her failed experimentation. Though symptoms did not start up until after a few weeks. But by then, Byrgenwerth had already begun to evacuate everyone due to the beast scourge happening in both Yharnam and here in the woods. Not that it would help if any of the scholars had stayed...there were others like Lysithea too—failures, who got sick and died,” She hissed spitefully between gritted teeth. Her hand reached out unconsciously and sought out Lysithea’s white, cold fingers on the bed.

Felix shook his head. “I still don’t understand. Why would she be so open to being experimented on? To what end does that achieve?”

“We just wanted to advance humanity...but along the way, we lost ourselves and became blind. Now Lysithea is dying and that... stupid lake outside is speeding up the process!”

“Rom…”

“As long as she lives, you will never reach Yahar'gul and Lysithea will die,” Annette confessed brokenly. “I tried to go down there and kill her myself but I’m no hunter…”

The pair quieted to a gentle hum; the entire college creaked from the torrents of wind that blew from the outside, and a lone whistle howled down the corridors. Annette’s crying lessened to a muffled sound deep within her chest, shaking her tiny body with every heave. Felix’s hand rubbed her back but the act along was foreign to him and he felt slightly funny doing so.

Either way, Annette seemed to appreciate the comfort and managed to smile a bit, though her anxiety-bitten lips were quivering.

“You know, I-I’m originally from Cathedral Ward,” She said softly.

“Really?” Felix raised a brow. “Did you work with the Healing Church at all?”

“Not me but my father. He was a part of the Choir along with my uncle.”

“So they were the elites?”

“Yes. But that wasn't what got me admitted here at the college—that’s all on me,” She explained without a shred of condescension, wiping a tear from her eye. “I just wanted to get away from Cathedral Ward and the church as far as I can. At first, I was offered a position with the church scholars but I turned it down and came to Byrgenwerth instead.”

“Better here than the Healing Church. They’re all dead.”

Annette laughed and shook her head. “I know.”

The implication was here and Felix sat back, rather shamefacedly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a long time ago.” She looked to her lover, resolute and unmoved. “I made my choices. So did they.”

“I wish I wasn’t so ignorant. I don’t even know anything about the Healing Church outside of their fall—everything else is all jargon to me…” Felix admitted.

Annette shifted in her seat and for a moment, her eyes tore off from Lysithea’s body and to the hunter, glazed over curiously. “You’re...an outsider, aren’t you?”

“I make no effort hiding it these days,” Felix grumbled and brushed his nose. “Yes, I’m from Cainhurst, a land so detached from Yharnam that it requires a great bridge across the sea to reach it. A bridge, which has long collapsed since the time of the Executioners’ assault.”

The scholar’s eyes lit up like the explosion of a star and she perked up rather excitedly, even through the tears. “W-Wow! So, you’re a vile blood? That’s amazing, I always, always wanted to meet someone from Cainhurst.”

“Why? Doesn’t the Healing Church tell little children in Cathedral Ward that we suck the blood of innocents? Or our Queen is an immortal parasite? Because it’s all true,” Felix retorted without feeling.

“Oh no, I read so much about Cainhurst and the court here in Byrgenwerth! Lysithea actually showed me some books with drawings of the castle too! It all seemed so pretty.” Annette stopped and frowned deeply. “Ah...but I forgot that the Executioners attacked and destroyed the castle years ago. I-I’m really sorry, Felix.”

“Don’t worry about it. I hardly think about them anymore,” He threw his gaze to the floor. “I have to worry about the future now. My future.”

“We both do,” She whispered and got up from her seat slowly when Lysithea began to cough wetly on the bed once again.

The scholar went immediately for the vial of medicine at the nightstand and bent over the sickly woman’s face. Annette carefully poured the syrup-like aid into Lysithea’s mouth, but almost immediately, she choked and coughed it back up as if her body was rejecting it.

Annette bent down and pressed her lips against Lysithea, forcing the body to swallow the medicine. Felix’s cheeks stung slightly with old shame and he turned away as Annette continued to kiss the woman. It was a moment of intimacy that he had no right witnessing and being a part of, but was practically glued to his seat.

After a moment, Annette rose and stared down at Lysithea. The sickly woman had become calm and still, the coughing was all but gone with even some pinkish warmth swirling at her cheeks. Felix was no doctor, but he knew quite tragically that whatever medicine Annette had just used was merely prolonging a terrible end. Lysithea’s blood would seek escape once again, and this was just a futile, saddening cycle all over again.

Annette sat back down and wiped the sweat from her brow, bits of blood swiped across her face. She looked so tired, so far away with a bit of a wobble that Felix felt compelled to sit closer in case she collapsed and he needed to catch her.

He placed his hand on her shoulder and she sighed.

“I don’t think...we have much time left.”

“No...no, we don’t,” Felix agreed solemnly.

Annette closed her eyes. “You made up your mind, haven’t you, Felix? That’s why you came to us so abruptly. What changed your mind?”

_Do you love me, Felix?_

The hunter straightened up looking straight ahead as if to keep his gaze steady and away from Annette’s deeply observant stare—afraid that one small moment will break his composure. He sucked in his breath sharply and stood up abruptly.

“The world’s gone to shit, has been for years. The only direction we have left for us is down. Might as well be the one to finally flip the switch,” Felix mumbled; he felt Annette tug at his sleeve and he looked down to see the scholar peering up at him with beckoning, teary eyes.

“If you descend the lake, you’ll never be able to come back here. Once Rom is dead, the way to Yahar'gul will be the only path left for you,” She warned carefully.

“Is that so?” The hunter said rather nonchalantly though the shakiness of his voice betrayed his unease. “Well then, I suppose I should return the favor for Lysithea and your gracious hospitality.”

“What do you mean?”

Felix turned around. “There is a tree post down by the abandoned village. Most likely, there will be a gunner up there—his name is Ashe. He will help you get to Yharnam, to this clinic run by an apothecary named Dedue. Tell him that Felix sent you and have him check on Lysithea’s condition. I believe that he could still help her…”

Annette stood up and she nearly tripped from the burst of energy. “T-Truly?!” 

“He’s pretty good. Gave me some powerful antidote that completely repelled the poison at the Forbidden Forest. If he can’t help, then the Odeon Chapel Keeper, Mercedes, can look over and keep Lysithea safe until the time comes.”

“Mercie! She’s running the chapel now?!”

Felix blinked. “Y-You know her? Oh that’s right—I forgot that she worked with the Healing Church in the old days. Were you two friends?”

Annette nodded excitedly. “She was always at the Cathedral when I was young! Oh by the Great Ones, it’s so good to hear that she is well. And Dedue? He is the apothecary? Yes, I will definitely bring Lysithea to both of them.” She smiled, like a ray of sunshine breaching the night, pure and warm and unlike any Felix had seen in years. “Perhaps there is hope after all.”

“The tree post is not far from the college. See if Ashe is there and he can help you back to Yharnam in no time,” Felix explained with a nod.

“Oh Thea, do you hear that? We’ll have people to help us now,” Annette cooed to the unresponsive bed, patting over the covers affectionately. Her expression faltered a bit with a slow sigh. “You won’t be happy leaving Byrgenwerth...but this is for the best.”

“I’ll clear a path for you both before I leave for Rom,” Felix said. The hunter stopped and added a bit more hesitantly. “We might not see each other again if things in Yahar'gul do not go well.”

“You know this and yet you are still going?”

“I must—I want to, Annette.”

The scholar clasped her hands together and frowned. A moment of respite between them and the soft, struggling breathing of the Wisdom of Byrgenwerth. Felix was not sure how he had been here in Byrgenwerth—three days? Four days? A week?

Time no longer had reign on him since Dimitri’s disappearance; everything moved in a matter of locations rather than time itself, and Felix felt as though it had been nearly an eon. It was not a so, he knew that, and yet the hunter’s foot struggled to abandon Annette.

He lifted his head, took in the cool forest air that drifted through the open cracks of their window- Lysithea and her windows, because it must have been her who did it- and finally turned to Annette with his hand resting on his weapon.

“Come. Prepare yourself for the journey—take all that you need and I will cut a path for you to the tree post,” Felix said straightly. “After that, I will go face my battle with Rom.”

“Could I get a hug before you leave?” Annette braved with big eyes. It was a request that left both of them speechless, Felix in particular.

He turned his head away to hide the growing blush on his face and covered his mouth. After a minute, his shoulders sagged in defeat and moved away slowly towards the door.

“If you must,”

Lysithea seemingly shifted around in agreement, her silent wisdom still present in the room even through her unconsciousness. Annette could only laugh in her hand, cheeks glowing with blood. 

And, for the first time, Felix felt himself truly loving another person outside of Dimitri and Glenn.

**Moonside Lake**

Annette’s pink lipstick was still stained on the hunter’s cheek, even as his entire body plunged down in the colorless, mirthless waters below.

He did not remember how he got away from her steely arms, just that Ashe had to pull the woman away at some point to reveal a half crying face, distraught with separation. Lysithea, who had gained some form of consciousness, gave a small wave and a rare smile—a bloody smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Felix had no doubt Ashe would help the girls reach the clinic. Dedue and Mercedes will be wonderful caretakers. Lysithea, for a time, will have aid. But for how long? And better yet, what will happen to everyone once Rom is dead and the illusion barrier separating the world from its actual madness? Will they lose themselves as well?

Felix had passed on to Annette an important letter he had written to Sylvain and Ingrid; a heavy letter, which he spent at least an hour to properly write before wrapping it up and handing it over to the young scholar. A letter of his true feelings, one that can never be spoken from the mouth and outward.

In case the Hunter will never return from Yahar'gul.

Even as he sunk lower and lower into the blindingly white abyss of the lake, all his mind could wander to is everyone he left behind back in Yharnam and Cathedral Ward. 

Sylvain and Ingrid back at the Hunter’s Dream or half-fooling, half-killing around the city; Mercedes and the survivors of both towns huddled up in the sanctuary of the Oedon Chapel; even newcomers he met along the way—reminders of a world still occupied by sane minds. 

Images and thoughts swirling towards an embittered regret pulsing vengefully deep in his heart, but there was no time or way to turn around now. Civilization, or at least, what was left of it, was up there—unreachable and on another plane of existence. And yet, Felix kept descending with a willingness to keep marching.

The water that threatened to break through his lungs had gradually become a misty air and the blurry vision around him stilled to a careening, never-ending distance. 

White-blood flowers fluttered in a dance down below when the hunter’s boots grazed a second layer of shallow water—almost like a pond that stretched out to nothing. He blinked and peered around to the completely white realm that encased all around him.

There was nothing but distance. Mist. Water. Air. And distance without an end. For a moment, Felix almost believed himself to be in a strange, dreamland—that he drowned somewhere along the way and ended up in a limbo between death and awakening. Felix touched the soft pulse beneath his neck and felt the steady beat of his human heart. His human, sane heart pulsing with warm, tainted blood.

He was here. They were there. And something was waiting for him in the mist. It lumbered towards him, a large round body with tiny appendages scurrying beneath in small flurry of movement. 

Felix watched as his blood raced to his fingertips and clambered in his gloves as the mist parted and revealed a valley of one hundred eyes sprawled across a dark face—a spider.

A mother spider with children. Children which screeched at the sight of the stranger and scurried quickly around the giant body of their slow, lumbering mother for protection.

Rom.

She stared at Felix from across the water, half-curious, half-fearful. Hardly a monster. Hardly a beast despite the ghastly appearance for she edged back and curled up a bit once her eyes landed on Chikage. She was scared. A human emotion. 

Rom the Scholar was still there somewhere. Rom the Guardian did not want to die here.

Felix sighed into the palm of his hand. He shook his head away of burdening emotions, thought kindly of Dimitri. Of Annette. Of Lysithea.

And then, the hunter pulled his scarf up around his mouth, took out his blade, and staggered forward to make himself a slaughterer of families.

Felix was so close; the actors were all but gone---the stage empty with the exception of two: one still in the spotlight and the other was waiting for his cue. The final act was near and Felix awaited feverishly for the grand finale. 

All that’s left for him, the path forward. Even if that path should reach an unhappy end.

At least it will end. And that was all that mattered.

\--------------

_Sylvain, Ingrid,_

_If this letter reaches you then Annette and Lysithea were able to reach the city safely. Those girls are good people, even the white-haired_ _little girl_ _woman. She has a very colorful personality but is fiercely intelligent. Sylvain, try not to say something stupid to her and you should be fine._

_Maybe you two have been worrying about me, about us. I can’t be certain that things are well. In this world, every condition is teetering between tolerable and outright terrible. And all I can tell you is that I am alive. It has been a while since I visited the Hunter’s Dream, though I do not plan on returning._

_Not without him._

_I am going to a place so far away and detached from here. From Yharnam and Cathedral Ward combined. An unreachable, deep, and out worldly place not meant to be trenched by man. With matters which no longer are about the beasts or the hunt._

_Dimitri knew something bigger than all of this, one that will utterly destroy you both should you find out. I can’t say now—none of you will believe me. Maybe you two will? Then that will bring anxiety and fear. None of us can afford that: focus on the hunt and take care of yourselves._

_I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could say. It has always been difficult to talk to—I know this. I wish I was better for everyone._

_I wish I could have been kinder to you, Sylvain. Your jokes were funny...sometimes. But it really did help keep me sane in the past five years. It kept all of us sane...for as long as it lasted._

_I wish I listened to you Ingrid. You were always the better of us. I know the years got hard; killing got easier even though it was not supposed to. But you never lost your humanity. Please, keep watch over the idiot and the Hunter’s Dream or it will all fall apart without you._

_Please don’t worry about me. Don’t search for me though it is useless in any case. I got this far and there’s no turning back now. My only wish is to find him no matter the cost. I know he’s there, waiting for me. And I kept him waiting for so long._

_And if Dimitri’s mind is without return? I have a duty. I will complete it. And once he’s given rest, I’ll keep fighting until this world is stained red or I fall first._

_Either way, the end will come._

_And we will all see each other again. This I believe in dearly, even I will never say it. Perhaps not now. Perhaps not soon. But we will be together again._

_In another world, time, and space. Maybe in this new age, neither of us will remember each other. Maybe our families will be alive and be there every step of the way. Maybe there won’t be beasts or madmen but actual people who talk with words of friendship. Maybe there will be a sunrise._

_Maybe I will fall in love with Dimitri again._

_But I am certain that like four paper boats wadding aimlessly in the water, we will cross paths eventually. It’s simply fate._

_And while I can’t promise to be...nicer in our reunion. I do promise that I will stay. If the Great Ones do exist and should they ever be sympathetic, my only wish is for us to be together again._

_There is not much time left. Dimitri is waiting for me. It would be rude to keep him any longer._

_Please hug and kiss Annette for me (Sylvain, she’s taken by the scary scholar in the wheelchair so don’t even try)._

_Let Lysithea know that she has my terribly eternal gratitude, even if it means nothing._

_Tell Leonie that she was always the better fighter. Smarter. Stronger._

_Give my thanks to Dedue for everything he has done. Everything he has done._

_Try and convince Ashe that he should join the workshop—we could use his gunner skills in the hunt._

_Mercedes should know that it was her alone that the survivors were able to get this far, because of her absolute grace._

_And you two, please watch after each other. I mean it. In this world, we only have each other or else we all die alone._ _Honestly, Dimitri always said that you two would be great together and I don’t want to push_

_I love everyone. Sincerely, eternally, and simply._

_Thank you and farewell._

🌑 **_New Moon – Blood Moon_** 🔴

The moon collapsed came when Rom’s limp body faded away with the clearing mist; Felix peered up at the back towards the breaking, mourning sky, towards the silver maiden wading beneath the complete void—her reflection in the still water.

Her figure stained white against the night, a worshiper exalting some far-off god sleeping beneath the stars, and she lifted her head to greet the black heaven. The long silver locks of her hair flowed outward over the red fields, and for a moment, Felix heard the whispers of a prayer. But he could not make any sense of the language and his ears bled from her voice.

A lullaby not meant for mankind. 

Her head craned over and the lilac of her eyes glowed ominously as the sky fell and bled with the white moon. The flowers shivered and the ground beneath them crumbled away, somber, silent, a soundless death.

A dream of silver, red, and lilac. A maiden, a moon, and flowers.

The moon bled and in that moment, a paralyzing thought possessed Felix terribly.

“ _Dimitri! Where the fuck are you going?! Get back here!”_

“ _No, don’t you dare! I don’t care what the reason is: You’re going mad! Come on, you’re not yourself…”_

“ _Let’s go see Mercedes. Please. I know she can talk some sense into you. Don’t look at me like that, come on!”_

“ _...What are you doing? W-Why are you coming at me like that? Dimitri, this is not fucking funny.”_

_“What’s wrong with you?! Don’t you recognize me?”_

“ _P-Put your weapon down, Dimitri. Please, Dimitri! D-Don’t you dare_ — _!!!”_

Felix touched his stomach.

The invisible scar of the rifle spear running through him and out the other end. Being pinned against the ground, choking on the blood that vomited out from his mouth—thrashing, desperate, paining. Hands clambering at the weapon, reaching out to his killer.

His beautiful, mad, blue-eyed, golden-haired killer.

The face of his beloved God.

His God had killed him. His God had betrayed him. His God had abandoned him.

A laugh climbed up his throat and Felix threw his body out in a fit of wild hysteria. He laughed, even as the Blood Moon sank into the ocean and bled richly into the water. 

A laugh that traveled out and to the silver haired maiden waiting on the other end with eyes of lilac.

A laugh of madness. A sob of the heartbroken.

And the world fell beneath him, falling so far down that when the darkness finally reached to consume him, Felix was long gone.

Just a lost northern star swirling in the pitch black of the night without the moon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! We actually had this on the back burner to deal with other things, but here we are! Thank you again for your patience :) The third chapter will be released some time after the new year! 
> 
> You can reach me at my [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/Meatbike344)
> 
> My beloved co author and artist can be reached at her [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/MistressAkira12)

**Author's Note:**

> We thank everyone for their kindness and we hope you enjoy the first part of our Bloodborne AU! It was a project originally created for Halloween but I'm glad we were able to jump into the Big Bang event! 
> 
> The next two parts will be released at scheduled dates so please look out for that! 
> 
> I personally want to thank my beta reader, beloved co-author, and work wife, [MistressAkira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressAkira/works), for her masterful edits and BREAKTAKING ART, and for being a wonderful trampoline for my stupid ideas this past month! Her work is absolutely excellent *chef's kiss* and I encourage everyone to check her out!
> 
> And if anyone wants more updates, you can reach me at my [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/Meatbike344)
> 
> My co author can also be reached at her [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/MistressAkira12)
> 
> Come and chat! We’re just sad memers.


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